


Stay A Thousand Years

by lucifersfavoritechild



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, Evil baby daddy to husband, F/M, Fluff, Gallifrey, Gallifrey is OK, Original Character(s), Other, Pregnancy, Pregnant Doctor, Time Lords, Time Lords are Assholes, a few years ago that would be a sign that this is an mpreg ship, be original?????? fuck off, because we acknowledge Missy in this house, episodes from doctor who as chapters because what am I gonna do??????, it's not though, plot???, the Master is back on the TARDIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifersfavoritechild/pseuds/lucifersfavoritechild
Summary: Sometimes, accidents happen. Sometimes that accident is that you had sex with your ex while in Paris in 1943 and got pregnant because you forgot you're a woman now. Sometimes your ex is a mass murderer who has tried to kill you multiple times in the past even though you still have feelings for each other. Sometimes you come from a culture that doesn't really have pregnancy and you have no idea what to do or expect. It happens. It's happening to the Doctor.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 230
Kudos: 690





	1. Surprise!

_ 1 Day — 2 Weeks _

She was there when he woke up, sitting just beyond the containment field with a phone in hand as she texted Yaz's mum (Najia was an excellent texter). He came to with a groan, scowling when he realized where he was. "Oh, _great._ "

The Doctor plastered on a fake smile, slipping her phone into a pocket. "Good morning."

He stared at her, every inch of his face conveying a desire to break through the barrier separating them and throttle her. It took a moment for him to catch himself enough to speak. "How am I here? Why did you bring me?"

"What? Did you think I'd leave you to the mercy of Nazis forever? I'm not _you_."

He dropped his head back on the floor. "I was going to betray them."

"That doesn't impress me. You'd betray yourself given half a chance."

The Master laughed, looking up at the ceiling and deciding not to tell her how true that was.

The Doctor, seemingly content that he wasn't going to need her to resuscitate him any time soon, stood up, walking to the door. "I left you a change of clothes, and you still have your piano and books. Better get settled in again."

He stared at her. "You can't mean—"

"I said I'd guard you for a thousand years. Well, we still have nine hundred and thirty to go." She opened the door and waved bye. "See you tomorrow!"

She was gone a moment later. He watched her leave, his eyes trained on the door long after she disappeared beyond it. Then he raged, grabbing what little furniture had been left to him and hurling it at the walls.

It didn't matter. They fell halfway there, struck by the containment field. He was stuck for now. 

He was back in the vault.

* * *

She watched him for a while from a monitor in the console room. Oh, he was angry, she knew, but when wasn't he? He'd calm down eventually. _(Maybe.)_ They'd talk then. She had no idea if they'd ever get back to where she'd been with Missy, but . . . Well. Nine hundred years was a long time, even for them. She'd figure it out.

"Doc," Graham spoke up, eyebrows furrowed in the way they were when he worried, "are you sure you want to keep him on the Tardis?"

The Doctor shrugged, trying to project a confidence she didn't feel. "I kept him in that vault for seventy years once, and he never got out on his own. There's no safer place in the universe." They didn't need to know that she meant both keeping the universe safe from him and him from it. He had too many enemies; she was the only person who would ever consider showing him mercy, and they both knew it.

Hearing him rage in the bowels of the Tardis, she wondered how long it would take him to remember that.

"What did he mean when he said you two know each other?"

The Doctor closed her eyes, holding back a sigh. _Yaz._ "Just that. We've met before." Then, because she might as well say it now since it was bound to come up later, "He's . . . one of my kind. A Time Lord. We knew each other."

Rather than answer the barrage of questions that followed, she shot up from where she'd been sitting and started walking off. "Right! Long day, gonna get some rest, see you all in the morning!"

"Doctor—"

Then she was gone.

* * *

The next two weeks were difficult. The Master alternated between howling with rage and cold mockery, going point by point through every failure in her life. So far, he hadn’t run out.

Didn’t matter. She’d put up with it, for now. She’d been making progress with Missy, and she was determined to get back to that point. Maybe they weren’t the only ones left anymore, but he was still _Koschei_. Her best friend, _first_ friend, her . . . her husband. She had a chance to bring him back to her now, and she wasn’t letting go anytime soon.

On the fifteenth day, she woke up groggy with the taste of bile in her throat. She felt achy, almost as bad as the time she and Koschei went to see the migration of a herd of flightless t'niftian birds and ended up getting trampled (luckily, they weren't very big birds).

It took her a while to get up. She kept convincing herself to take five more minutes, until she realized that if she didn't just make herself get up, she'd be there all day. Then it took five minutes to convince herself that was a bad thing.

She dragged herself through the halls of the Tardis, yawning into her hand. She was just outside the kitchen door when she heard voices. Another moment (a worrying amount of time), and she recognized who it was.

". . . and she's spending all her time down in that vault."

"What do you think she's doing with him?" That was Ryan, his voice confused, worried. "If he's supposed to be imprisoned, what's she doing that takes 'er hours every day?"

"She said they knew each other. Do you think they were friends?"

Graham scoffed. "Wat, the Doctor friends with an arse like that? He tried to kill us, tried to kill _her!_ "

"Then why is he _here?_ " Yaz asked, sounding more concerned than the others. "If he's so dangerous, why keep him on the Tardis and not in a prison somewhere, or take him back to their planet and turn him in?"

"She said this is safer." But she could tell that Ryan wasn't convinced.

Neither was Yaz. "Why does the Doctor have a cell for containing murderers? She's supposed to be a traveler. She said he's 'one of her kind', but _what's her kind?_ Where are they from?"

It was at that point the Doctor realized she was eavesdropping on her friends. And also, standing in one place was getting tiring, and she really wanted to get to the breakfast table.

She bounded into the room with a smile. "Morning!" She slid into place between Yaz and Ryan, rubbing her hands together. "What's for breakfast? Brekkie? Do people still say that?"

They stared at her. "Breakfast?" Graham asked. "Doctor, we're havin' _lunch._ You slept for more than fourteen hours."

She stared at him. "What? No, that's . . ." She closed her eyes, trying to clear her head. _Something's . . ._ Her sense of time was all off. It took far too long to tell how many hours she'd been asleep. It wasn't instinctual like it should be for a Time Lady. Not to mention what was going on with her if she was sleeping ten hours more than usual—

Her eyes shot open, alerted by a sudden smell. Beside her, Ryan was eating a sandwich with fried eggs. When he bit into it, yolk went flowing all over the bread, disgusting, smelly yellow goo that stared up at her as it dripped all over the place and got on his hand—

The Doctor jumped up from her chair, ran over to the sink, and vomited.

* * *

"Give it to me straight, old girl," The Doctor said as a machine in the Tardis's medbay scanned her. "Did the Kasaavin do something to me? The Master? Some kind of space virus?" 

The Tardis beeped in the way it knew the Doctor liked when the results came back. The Doctor stared, read them, then stared some more. She read them once, twice, three more times before saying, "Oh."

. . . 

"But that's _impossible!_ " Time Lords couldn't — well, technically they _could_ , but they _didn't_. Ever since the looms were invented, everyone used those, especially since Rassilon outlawed pregnancy. And besides, Gallifreyan families usually had their children sterilized before sending them to the academy, although the process was undone by regeneration and subsequent surgery had to be done to fix it . . . surgery she never had. But even then, it was never something she and the Master had to worry about because they were both men— _Oh, I see it now. Hm._

Well, fuck.

* * *

The thing was, she didn't know what to do now. Her first instinct was to just kind of ignore it and hope it went away, but she figured that wasn't gonna work this time. Her next thought was to go to Gallifrey for help, but if she was thinking logically, she knew that none of them would know what to do in a situation like this. Not to mention she was technically a fugitive again, although she didn't entirely know why, and this was enough on it's own for them to arrest her. She could just imagine the Time Lord councilors ranting about her "perversity" (again), and that was the last thing she needed. She was on her own. At least until she told . . .

As though he'd known she was about to think his name and somehow determined this worthy of punishment, a familiar hand grabbed her from behind, twisting her around and lifting her up before slamming her onto one of the console panels, startling a shout out of her. His hand moved, closing around her neck.

The Master lowered his face over hers, teeth showing in a snarl. " _Doctor._ "

Okay, MAYBE she should have reinforced the vault's security. 

"DOCTOR!"

And now the fam had heard her and were running in. _Great._

She tried to pry his hand away. "You're not gonna kill me."

His eyes were dark and angry, not unlike how they'd been in Paris when they'd pulled their clothes back into place and he realized what she did. "Why wouldn't I?"

She was tempted to say, _Because you could never really kill me_ , something emotional like that. But then his hand tightened, and she remembered she was breathing for two now and it would probably be better if she just got him to stop, like, NOW. 

"I'm pregnant."

Everything stopped. She stared at the Master, he stared back, and the fam stared at both of them. Even the Tardis seemed to be staring.

To her shock, his fingers tightened. " _Who?_ "

 _What the— oh, for fuck's sake!_ "You." She managed to loosen his pinkie. "Paris. Remember?"

He did. About thirty seconds later than she'd have liked, but he did. His eyes widened, imperceptibly for a human, and maybe even other Time Lords, but she knew him too well not to notice.

His hand loosened so he wasn't choking her, but still strong enough that she didn't try to move. "Liar."

"Think so?" She made an odd gesture where she tried to motion to her head with her chin. "Check."

He narrowed his eyes, looking in her eyes for some hint of a trap. Finally, he raised a free hand enough to her forehead. She sucked in a breath when he pushed into her mind. There was an easier and more thorough way of doing so that lied in the marriage bond that existed between their minds, though it was cold and dormant. But that way meant opening himself up to her, vulnerability, and that was dangerous. Paris had been more than enough and look at where it got them.

He looked through her mind for what he wanted, discarding all the rest. He found what he was looking for in her memories of Paris, her legs around his waist and her fingers in his hair. He'd held her up against the railing and left a dark trail of bite marks along her neck. Their hearts beat in unison, and in the moment, it seemed like the only natural result of putting their minds together.

The memory shifted to her morning, the hard time getting up and aversion to egg yolks and the Tardis confirming what should have been obvious.

When it was done, they just stared at each other, neither really knowing what to do. Then, moving slow as though not to startle her, he removed his hands and lifted her back up to her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is happening.
> 
> I got this idea in my head when I saw a post on tumblr with a crack theory that the Timeless Child is the Doctor and the Master's kid, and that sent me down a rabbit hole when I thought "wait, they COULD have a kid now"
> 
> Some of this is canon, some is canon-adjacent or influenced, and some of it comes straight from my brain. Good luck telling which is which.


	2. Dr. Exposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and the Master discuss what to do, and Team Tardis finally gets some answers.

_2 Weeks_

There was a quiet, awkward moment where nobody seemed to know what to do. Then— “What the hell is goin’ on, Doc?!”

Yaz and Ryan immediately lent their words to Graham’s (reasonable) question. The Master looked at her with an expression caught between amusement and anger. “Your pets are whining.”

The Doctor bit back a sharp remark, turning to look at her friends, not-so-subtly putting herself in between them and the other Time Lord. “Right. I know that you must have a lot of questions—”

“ _Yes!_ ”

“—but I really have to talk to him alone right now.”

They looked at her. She looked back, gesturing between herself, the Master, and her stomach. They relented.

Once they were gone, shooting her concerned looks as they walked out, it was just herself and the Master. Knowing better than to let him speak first, she said, "Borusa was right."

He blinked, clearly not expecting that. "About what?"

"In class, the first day we talked about the looms, he said if we had sex once, we'd get pregnant and probably die."

"You're not dead."

"You just tried to kill me."

"You're fine."

"Yeah, _now_."

They shared a smile, and for a moment allowed themselves to forget. Then the silence crept back in, and there was no ignoring it.

The Master leaned back against the console, ignoring the indignant sound the Tardis made in response. "What do we do now?"

The Doctor looked around awkwardly. "I don't really know. I haven't had a chance to think about it."

His eyes turned dark when he said, “I won’t let you keep them from me.”

He was entirely serious. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Wasn’t planning to.” She didn’t think that would end well for any of them. And if she thought about it, she didn’t really want to. Buried deep under the blood and anger and hatred, Koschei was still there, and she could not imagine having a baby without him. And she knew that no matter what he became, he would not hurt his own child. He had always loved their children, although their time with them was cut short, sometimes by Gallifrey, sometimes by themselves, and sometimes by the universe itself. 

“Looks like we’re at a stalemate.”

The Master smiled mockingly. “Oh, my dear doctor. Are you going to try to make me be good again? That didn’t end so well for you last time.” Didn’t end well for him either, come to think of it. That regeneration had been slow and painful, not to mention getting back to Gallifrey and finding a Tardis. And he hadn’t even gotten anything out of it.

The Doctor glared at him. He liked it when she did that. Anger was a good look on her, it always had been. He still remembered the rage on his face when Rassilon tried to break free of the Time War at the expense of the universe. He’d been so beautiful in his victory and defeat, his _hatred_ , that the Master couldn’t help wanting to die for him. 

_Oh, look at me. Getting all mushy._ Fatherhood could do that to a man, he knew well enough. He still remembered . . . _No, nevermind that._

The Doctor gripped and ungripped the console. _This is going to be a long day._ “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

He looked around. “I suppose you want to stay on this broken old thing you call a Tardis?”

The console flared red.

“Yes. She’ll help keep you in line.” 

He pouted. “Doctor . . . it’s almost like you don’t trust me.”

“Yeah. Remember that.”

Of course. How could he ever forget?

The Doctor started walking around, seeming to grow anxious whenever she stood in one place too long. “If this is going to work, we can’t be at each other's throats all the time. That means no killing, plotting, betrayal, and no touching my friends!”

“No keeping me in a cell, no running headlong into danger, no arguing in front of the kids . . .”

She frowned. “Why should you care if I get into danger?”

He stared at her. “Doctor, I know you’re a bit _slow_ today, but surely you know what pregnancy . . . _is_?”

 _Oh, right._ She had to give him that one, she hadn’t thought that far. _Well, I'll try._ “You’re probably right.”

“I always am.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

* * *

“Thank you, Graham,” she said when the man handed her a cup of tea.

"Course, Doc," he said with a smile.

Yaz and Ryan looked at him. "Graham!" Yaz said, gesturing at him.

"What?" Graham asked defensively. "She's pregnant!"

"Yes! That's what we're supposed to be talking about!"

"Well, excuse me for trying to be helpful!"

"Is tea safe for pregnant women?" Ryan asked.

"Oh, I'm a Time Lord, it'll be fine."

"Great," Yaz said with fake cheer. "Glad we settled that! So we're done then?"

The Doctor looked up in surprise. "Already? Brilliant! I'm gonna kip off and— oh, wait." She caught Yaz's expression. "You're being sarcastic. Hm. I don't like that."

"We just want answers, Doctor," Ryan said, occasionally looking at her stomach like he thought it might attack them. 

" _Thank you_ , Ryan," Yaz said. "Doctor, who is the Master? What do you mean you two 'know each other'? Are you actually pregnant?"

The Doctor sipped her tea. "Those are good questions." She looked at her friends. They were concerned for her, she could tell, but also confused, and probably angry. She'd wanted to keep her past from them, but now it wasn't working. _Nowhere to go but forward._ "The Master and I grew up together on Gallifrey. When we were adults, we got married and traveled together. We had two kids, but . . ." No, she couldn't do that. She couldn't tell them about her son. Two thousand years, and the wound was still too raw. "Something happened. He started getting angrier, more paranoid, more power-hungry. We visited a planet a few galaxies from home that was ruled by a dictator. It was so long ago now, I don't even remember their name. We helped stage a rebellion and overthrew them, but at the end, the Master decided to stay and rule himself."

"And you let him?" Yaz asked in shock.

"Well, I didn't know at the time what he was gonna be like! Thought he'd be all . . . benevolent and stuff. Which is not what happened." She still felt guilty about that, though she'd helped oust him in the end. He still hadn't forgiven her for that. "Next time we saw each other, he wasn't who he used to be and neither was I. And we've been on opposite sides ever since."

"I'm sorry," Yaz said sincerely, reaching out to squeeze the Doctor's hand in comfort. 

The Doctor, not knowing what to do, awkwardly held her hand for a moment before letting go. 

Ryan was frowning. "What happened to your kids?"

She'd been hoping they wouldn't ask. "Our daughter finished school and became a Time Lady. But she never took a Tardis or a title, and I haven't seen her in a long time now." Selene had been lost in the Time War, but was restored along with the rest of the Time Lords when the Doctor saved them. But according to one of her kids, she'd left Gallifrey after a visit to the council, and no one had heard from her in a while. The Doctor had searched for her before receiving a curt message informing her that she was fine, merely looking for information on an old Gallifreyan legend, and would ask for help if it was needed. Apart from that, they hadn't spoken.

"What about your other—"

"Don't," she cut Graham off. "Don't . . . ask me about him." _Helio._ Her golden son . . .

The awkward silence grew around them. Ryan was the first to break it. "Can we meet your daughter?"

The Doctor hesitated before answering. "Not right now. She's a busy woman, you know. Besides, I won't be able to go to Gallifrey until this one is born."

They seemed confused. "Why not?"

"Oh, they'd arrest me and probably kill the Master and the baby."

" _What?!_ " Each of them yelled at the same time, horrified. "Why would they do that to you?" Graham asked. "To a little baby?"

"Well, it's different there." She'd always hated a lot of things about her home, but sometimes it took something like this to remind her how bad it could be. "You're not supposed to get pregnant, you're supposed to use this big machine called a Loom."

"Loom?"

"Yes, because it takes genetic material and kind of . . . " She made a complicated knitting motion. "Loom together a baby. This is just another reason for them not to like me." Well, she'd always been a rebel. "They'd think think this was a perversion. _Wrong._ And the Master is technically still a war criminal, so they'd try to kill him on sight."

Yaz shook her head. "This is insane."

"Yeah. You know what sounds good right now? Banana ice cream! Ooh, in a lettuce wrap!"

Graham wasn't sure if she was just trying to change the subject or not. "I think you're having cravings."

"What makes you say that?" She jumped up and headed for the console room, but Yaz stopped her, holding her wrist.

"Doctor," she started, her tone deadly serious, "how do you know we're safe with _him_ here?"

"I won't let him hurt you. You're my fam." She didn't promise, her promises always ended up broken. "If he tries anything, I'll throw him in another dimension and leave him there. Done that before, took him a while to get out."

Yaz didn't look convinced. "Are _you_ safe with him here?"

The Doctor made herself smile. "He won't hurt me. Not now, not like this." Even the Master had limits, things he wouldn't do.

The problem was what would happen afterwards.


	3. Why Do All Of Our Vacations End Up Like This?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Orphan 55, but with thoschei, (over) protective Master, and a pregnant Doctor

_1 Month_

“Thank you for cleaning this up, guys,” the Doctor said, skirting around the tentacle that lay in a puddle of slime and blue blood on the console room floor. “And sorry again. I didn’t realize it was their mating season.”

“I could have told you,” the Master said from his chair at the console, feet up as he read a book on 38th-century poisons. He always enjoyed the classics.

Ryan scowled at him. “I know why the Doctor’s not cleaning. Why aren’t _you_ helping us?”

“Because I’m above you.”

Before the Doctor could snap at him (she was already tense from the previous day when he’d “accidentally” blown up one of her favorite kitchens), Graham came into the room with something in his hands. “Got it!”

“Got what?” The Doctor kicked the tentacle out of her way before coming to stand next to Graham, cringing when the thing writhed around. She’d considered giving it to the Master and letting him access to one of her labs to keep him occupied, but immediately discarded the idea. Knowing him, he'd probably use it to make something to poison the fam in their sleep, then knock the Doctor out and keep her tied to a bed for the next seventeen months.

“The sixth coupon from the Bandohzi Herald. Keeps getting delivered by the coffee machine upstairs — or is it downstairs — anyway, I noticed they've had an offer on.” He separated the square pieces of paper he held in his hands, stacking them on the console. “Collect six coupons, get a free holiday!”

The Master peered over the top of his book. “Well, look at that, Graham,” he said encouragingly. “You counted all the way to six correctly!”

The Doctor smacked his leg. “One more smart remark out of you, and I’ll tell the Tardis to take away your bed again!”

“That’s you told,” Ryan said with a smug look aimed at the Time Lord. The Master would have liked to kill him then, but he imagined that would result in a harsher slap on the wrist than losing his bed privileges. “Where’s the holiday?”

* * *

“Welcome to Tranquility Spa!” The cat-woman said cheerfully, shuffling over to them. “O'Brien party of five? I'm Hyph3n with a 3, your customer host here at Tranquillity Spa.” 

“Hi, Hyph3n with a 3,” the Doctor said, looking around. “Nice tail. But I'm a bit worried about being separated from my ship?”

“Yes, because _somebody_ ,” The Master glared at Graham, “formed the teleport cube a bit early and we didn’t have time to make the proper arrangements.”

“Our system has saved exactly where you came from,” Hyph3n-with-a-3 assured them. “You can return any time, but you're booked in for two weeks, all-inclusive! Your rooms are just being prepared. Take a moment to explore and I'll come and find you once they're ready.”

The humans dispersed quickly, to his momentary gratitude. The Master looked around with bothering to listen to them, noting how bare the landscape seemed, blue and gray and empty except for the hotel and pool areas. _Probably ripped up some forest or town to build this ugly place._ The thought made him smile, and he wrapped an arm around the Doctor’s waist. “What do you think, sweetheart?” He asked with the toothy smile she’d enjoyed so much when he was O. “Couple’s massage? Destroying a suite with interesting new sex positions? An ‘unplanned’ disaster that gets this whole planet destroyed? Steam room?”

The Doctor removed his hand from her, ignoring his perfectly lovely suggestions. “Let’s just have a look around for a bit.” 

They passed the pool (the Master was far too interested in asking how deep it was, looking at an elderly couple sitting nearby), a restaurant (the smell of which caused the Doctor to vomit into a nearby bin), and a clay disk shooting range (which seemed like asking for trouble), before making their way to the bar and refreshment zone (which was thankfully far less smelly than the Martian-Taiwanese-American fusion restaurant had been).

Ryan was already there, holding his hand away from him and yelling out suddenly in pain. The Doctor went over to him immediately while the Master ignored them in favor of ordering a glass of hyper-vodka. He watched idly as the Doctor diagnosed and removed the hopper virus that had shocked him, sighing as he recognized the herald of a new day's worth of problems.

* * *

" _Relax. This is a routine Tranquility drill—_ "

The Master swiped the Doctor's sonic from her pocket, using it to shut the nearest speaker down. "Oh please, we all know routine drills are never actually routine."

"Give me that," she demanded, snatching it back as they found who they were looking for. "Hyph3n with a 3!" She held up the baggy holding the hopper virus. "I just pulled _this_ out of a friend of mine."

Hyph3n seemed uncomfortable. "Well, we do not make any judgments on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquillity Spa."

The Master raised his brow. "See Doc, and you said I wasn't allowed to have any fun."

"No, I said no one was allowed to have _your_ kind of fun. And it wasn't recreational. This is a weapon. I'd say someone is targeting you. Now, why would they do that? _Also_ , why is that alarm going off? And why do you look so concerned? _Also_ , where does the 3 come in Hyphen? _Also,_ also," she pointed at the door Hyph3n had been headed towards, "what's behind that door? 'Cuz no linen cupboard needs a key with that many security gradings. I want to take a look."

"Guests aren't permitted in the . . ." Hyph3n stumbled over herself for a moment. ". . . linen cupboard.

The Master turned his puppy-eyes ( _very_ effective in this regeneration, quite useful) on the Doctor. "Can we try my way now? You said I might get to kill some bad guys."

The Doctor brushed ahead of him slightly, pulling out her psychic paper. "We're _obviously_ not there yet. And would, say, a Pan-galactic Standards and Practices Officer be allowed in?"

Hyph3n shook her head.

"Oh? Health and Safety?"

No.

"Security and Hygiene?"

Nope.

"What about a quick mind control, no blood needed?" the Master asked, being helpful.

The Doctor ignored him. "Resort Inspector."

Ah, that one worked. Pity.

They went inside what was definitely _not_ a lined cupboard. "Ooh," the Master said, looking at a wall of guns and weapons. "Doctor, you pick the most _romantic_ places." He slipped a few things into his pockets (bigger-on-the-inside, of course) before she could notice, too busy looking at a wall of security screens from around the resort. 

"Yeah, a deadlocked room with its own armory. Practically a honeymoon suite."

"Hyph3n, what the hell are you doing?" A new woman, this one in an ugly green jumpsuit, asked before grabbing the Doctor by the arm and turning her around. "Who's this—"

Before she could answer, the Master moved, grabbing the woman by the throat and holding her against a wall. He grinned. "Hi. I'm the Master. The woman you so casually put your filthy hand on is my pregnant wife, the Doctor." He squeezed, enjoying the feeling of fragile bones beneath his hands. "Now, you're going to answer our questions and maybe in return, I won't kill you. Don't worry yourself over that, it won't be a burden for me to kill you at all if that's what you choose." This was shaping up to be an excellent holiday. "Am I understood?"

She managed a nod, and he reluctantly put her down, if only because the Doctor was projecting her worry and the last thing he wanted was to unnecessarily stress her.

The Doctor gave him a look before touching his arm and speaking to him telepathically. _We are going to have WORDS once we get back to the Tardis._ Out loud, she said, "We just found this hopper virus in your vending machine. Now, this'll mutate any system it hops into and wreck it — and it's part of a family set, so there are other replications out there. Which might explain why your ionic membrane's failed, which begs the question: why would you need to defend a holiday spa with an ionic membrane?"

As though in answer, a voice sounded from the computer. " _Confirmed sighting. It's on the loose inside . . . Kane, it's attacking the guests._ "

The woman — Kane — got a scared look in her eyes for a moment before forcing it back down, running around to start pulling down guns from the walls. "Do _not_ engage. I'm en route. We have to implement teleport evacuation procedures—"

"Don't bother," the Master said, sneaking another one into his pocket. "That virus will be in your teleport system by now, along with everything else."

"He's right," the Doctor said, standing beside him, blocking the door. "I need you _here_ to help me understand this place, not out there shooting at things." She looked over the computers. "How many people have you got staying here?"

Kane pointed to one of the screens, this one showing a map of the resort with a bunch of glowing dots running around it. "Twenty-three. This shows all their positions."

As soon as she spoke, the computer started dinging. "Guest offline." Twenty-one. "Guest offline." Twenty. "Guest offline . . ."

"Oh, this is fun," the Master said, smiling when a different monitor showed security footage of people running down corridors in fear. "How long do you think it'll take to make it through everyone?"

The Doctor ignored him, which was probably for the best. She leaned over to an intercom and spoke. "All guests within the hotel building, to the linen cupboard in the north corridor immediately. Not a drill. Repeat, not a drill."

"Killjoy," the Master said, leaning against a table and looking at Kane. "Where's your security team? Or have they already been eaten?"

"No team," Kane admitted. "Just me and Vorm."

The Master sneered. "You put in an ionic membrane before actual security? Oh, Doctor, you must love this, surrounded by idiot humans for you to save."

It was getting very hard not to scream in frustration.

* * *

It was a matter of minutes for two Time Lords to get the ionic membrane up and running and work out a debug script to neutralize the hopper viruses. Of course, then the security cameras started going out (hungry monsters that could _think_ ; this was getting interesting), but at least the membranes got those things out—

“Where’s Ryan?”

_It can never be that simple._

“Open the door,” the Doctor said, her smile long gone. One screen showed dozens of red dots. _Casualties._ “C’mon.”

Unfortunately for the Master, who’d been hoping to cut down on the number of human pets by at least two, Ryan had managed to hide away during the attack, and joined the rest of the survivors as they went outside.

“What is it that got in here?” The Doctor asked. The Master walked on her left, one hand wrapped protectively around her arm.

“A couple of the locals,” Kane explained, gun lowered. “Dregs. They're always trying to attack. That's why we have shields. But the _virus_ that brought the shields down, the Dregs couldn't have done that. Somebody hacked the system.”

“Why bother?” the Master asked. “There’s nothing here, nothing and no one important, offense intended.”

The human ignored him, instead opening up a panel in the grid surrounding the resort. A black wall appeared in front of them, showing where a hole had been torn into the grid surrounding the resort.

“Fake-cation,” the Doctor realized. “The hotel is real, and the pool, but you reach a certain point . . .” She knocked on an invisible wall. “Ooh, it’s impressive.”

“It would be,” the Master said, turning around to the woman who’d trapped them here. “If it was built in a city and not surrounded by a native species that wants to kill everyone inside.” 

The Doctor stuck her hand through the hole in the wall before pulling it back and licking one of her fingers. “Completely different environment out there, barely any oxygen, too much CO2.”

As though on cue, Yaz walked up with a little old woman beside her and a pad in hand. “Doctor, you need to see this! They've built a wall all around this hotel. Vilma said it's the first off-world fake-cation.”

“Congratulations, Yasmin!” The Master said. “You’re only about twenty minutes later than the rest of us!”

The Doctor pinched his arm. “Play nice.”

Yaz ignored both of them, handing her pad over to the Doctor. “Vilma’s boyfriend is missing. According to this, he’s outside the shields.”

The Master took the pad, making an exaggerated look of surprise. “Oh, well, guess he’s dead. Too bad.”

The Doctor took it back. “Don’t—”

“He’s right,” Kane said, surprising everyone. “There's not enough oxygen. He'd be dead before we reach him.”

“Benni has an oxygen tank,” Vilma explained, growing desperate. “Oh please, we have to find him!”

“He came here because of _you_ ,” the Doctor said darkly, looking at Kane. “If there's even the slightest chance of finding him, you need to do it. We'll help!” 

“ _We’ll_ help?” The Master narrowed his eyes. “Doctor, you’re pregnant. Even _if_ I cared about saving one measly human life, you’re not going on a dangerous rescue mission in a place with barely any oxygen.”

The Doctor stared at him. “What, you’re not gonna _let me_ , now?” She started to walk off, but the Master pulled her back.

He stared into her eyes, holding her waist to resist the urge to strangle her. “Listen to me, Doctor. You _will_ obey me, and you are _not_ going anywhere!”

She pried his hands away, managing to back up so that Yaz and Ryan were on either side of her. “Oh, please. You haven’t been able to hypnotize me since we were fifty and you know it.” She started to walk away. “As long as I can still run, I have to help. Stay here, if you like.”

The Master growled, becoming more and more angry as he realized what he was about to do. “ _Fine!_ ” He grabbed the Doctor’s hand, pulling her forward. “I’ll go with you. Just don’t expect me to _help_.”

* * *

They took an armored truck into the desolate gray wasteland, each of them with an oxygen canister that was going to start going down the second they left the truck, which was obviously going to happen because when did anything ever go well for them?

“This whole planet is dead,” the Doctor explained to one of her companions, looking out of a tiny window. “It’s an orphan planet, too toxic for most life. We shouldn’t be here.”

The Master smiled in a way that was really just showing his teeth. “You don’t say, Doctor? I wonder who might have mentioned—”

“Oh, shove off, we both know you had no idea this planet was irradiated.”

“It is?” Yaz asked, horrified. “Doctor, I hate to agree with the Master, but should you be out here? Is that safe for—”

“Don’t worry about me, Yaz,” the Doctor said irritably. “Most radiation doesn’t affect us like you. We use roentgen to make baby blocks. I’ll be fine.” Maybe it was just that she hadn’t eaten since that morning, but she was starting to get more than a little huffy. “Am I going to have to put up with you lot acting like I’m fragile for the next seventeen months? Sounds exhausting.”

“ _Seventeen months?_ ”

He had to admit, it was quite amusing when her pets managed to conjure enough brain cells to speak at the same time.

The Doctor blinked owlishly. “Oh, did I not tell you that? Gallifreyans have long pregnancies, about eighteen Earth months from conception. Another reason we usually prefer Looms.”

“Anything else you want to tell us before we find out?” Graham asked incredulously.

The Master spoke up first. “Let’s see, four trimesters, in-utero telepathic communication, and the last hundred days are spent on _total_ bed rest, oh she’s gonna hate _that_.”

The Doctor grumbled to herself, crossing her arms over her stomach and sitting back. She didn’t want to think that far ahead. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but there was no way around it. By that point, the baby would be siphoning off her regeneration energy and developing the neurons that would allow it to communicate telepathically. It was long work, and according to the information they’d managed to find on Time Lord pregnancies, likely to strain her mind to the point of death. 

She tried not to think of how many Gallifreyans _had_ died that way.

“If it’s too toxic for life,” Ryan said, clearly hoping to change the subject, “then what’s out there?”

The Doctor quickly jumped on the opportunity, explaining, “Usually what happens is that there’s a disaster, like a nuclear war, that kills everything on the face of the planet. The ruling elite evacuates, and everything unlucky enough to be left behind dies. Except here, _something_ survived.” She looked at Kane. “Why here? Why build this hotel? It doesn't make any sense.”

“Oh, the air's unbreathable,” Kane admitted, “but a few years with the right terraforming, we can reduce the CO2 and make the whole planet habitable. If it works, and we sort out the Dregs, it’ll be the best real estate in the galaxy.”

The Master chuckled. “ _If._ ”

“Hey, Doc,” Graham said suddenly, frowning down at a pad. “Benni’s moving.”

“Maybe he’s heading back,” Vilma said hopefully.

Kane looked over Graham’s shoulder before speaking to the driver. “Abort the mission.”

The Doctor stared at her as the truck stopped. “He’s _alive_ , we know where he is—”

“He’s moving at thirty-seven clicks an hour. That’s too fast, the Dregs must’ve got him. We leave.”

“If those things have got Benni, we're getting him back,” Vilma said defiantly.

“A man’s _life_ is at stake,” the Doctor said, standing up. “We keep going.” 

_Are we going to do this all day?_ Refusing to let that happen, the Master stood in front of the other Time Lord and stared into Kane’s eyes. “Listen to me. We will keep going, and you will listen to the Doctor and do what we say. _Now._ ”

He’s always been excellent at mental manipulation, and on a human mind, it was almost too easy. Kane nodded with clouded eyes and ordered the driver to keep going. 

The Doctor pulled him back so they were facing each other. “You shouldn’t do that. I could’ve worn her down.” But she brushes her fingers over his, enough that he can hear what she doesn’t say loud and clear. _Thank you._

His smile is surprisingly genuine. “You’re welcome.”

* * *

The Master grabbed her when the truck suddenly started shaking, holding her against a seat so she didn’t go flying on the ground. When it grew still again, he cupped her cheek and looked at her. “Okay?”

She nodded, covering his hand with hers. “Yeah. Okay.” She looked around. “What was that?”

Kane stepped outside with the Time Lords on her heels, cursing. Fog surrounded them, and one of the wheels had hit a rock covered in old barbed wire, tearing it apart. “This is a trap, probably from the Dregs. This mist is highly toxic, and when it clears, direct sunlight is worse. We get ten minutes of solar blistering and then . . .”

“Oh, let me guess,” the Master said angrily. “Horrific burning death?”

She didn’t respond.

He took the Doctor by the arm, leading her back into the truck. “You shouldn’t be breathing this stuff.” For once, she didn’t argue.

Kane quickly followed them, checking the truck’s tracking systems. “There's a service tunnel close by. If we can make it to that, we might live.”

“We can’t leave,” Vilma insisted, desperate. “We came here for _Benni!_ ”

“Oh no, he’s almost certainly dead by this point,” the Master said helpfully. “Best not to join him.”

Everyone glared at him, but no one could argue. They filed outside, the Doctor close beside him. She gave the Master a dirty look when he pulled a gun out of his pocket (exciplex modulator; perfect for something that can adapt to attacks) but didn’t say anything for once. The air was even worse than they’d imagined, but the two of them could last a good twenty or thirty minutes more the others with their respiratory bypass systems. Although he wasn’t sure how strained hers would be with the extra oxygen demands—

The old woman started calling out suddenly, and he didn’t bother to listen before slamming a hand over her mouth and wrenching her back. “ _Shut._ **_Up._ ** _You’re going to call them to us—_ ”

The Doctor looked down at a pad, eyes widening. “They’re massing in the hills around us.” From the mist, they heard low, angry growls. 

The Master let go of Vilma to grab the Doctor’s wrist and start pulling her back. “To the truck.” They started to run. “ _C’mon!_ ”

Had running been this hard before? Her lungs were burning in moments, and she was glad for the Master’s hand making sure she didn’t fall behind. 

He made sure she got into the truck first, and waited behind while the others moved, shooting into the mist with expert precision. He’d managed to down half a dozen by the time he got back into the truck with the others, and was feeling almost normal (for him, at least), when the Doctor pulled him down next to her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders in what he belatedly realized was a hug. “Be faster next time,” she muttered, not looking at him. 

He wanted to say something clever, but then they heard the sound of claws on metal, and it just didn’t seem like a good time.

“Doctor,” Yaz said, huddling alongside the other humans, “what are we gonna do?”

Kane checked their tracker. “Vorm, we're going to deal with the Dregs. Master, Doctor, get them out, head east, look for a hatch. We'll keep them busy.” She stood up, her gun ready, but everyone stopped when they heard another voice.

“Vilma?” The man’s voice was tired and hurt. “Are you in there?”

The Master rolled his eyes. “Fucking finally.”

“Benni?” Vilma asked, suddenly hopeful. “Benni!”

“The Dregs still have him,” the Master pointed out. “Doctor, if you even _try—_ ”

“Vilma. I can't believe you came. I'm not alone, and I don't have long, but I . . . I have two questions. I'm sorry to ask them together, but . . . Will you marry me?”

_This is exhausting._

Vilma, at least, seems happy. “Oh, of _course_ I will! _Yes!_ What was the other one?”

“If anyone can, will they please shoot me?”

It was probably for the best that the Doctor covered his mouth.

Moments later, a Dreg started ripping a panel from the roof of the truck. The Master took his gun and smashed the glass covering the emergency floor panel release, opening a small door. One of the humans, a child and son of an engineer, went first, then his father, and the Master shoved the Doctor through before she could protest. “Go.” He followed her, the companion-humans close behind. “ _Run!_ ”

From behind them, they heard screaming, probably from the cat-woman. Normally it was a sound he enjoyed, but under the circumstances . . .

They found a service hatch nearby and climbed in one at a time, closing the top behind them. 

“We’re safe,” Kane said, panting, after they did their oxygen checks. “There's a short-range maintenance teleport here, which should just get us back to base. Stay close. There's only enough power for one use.”

After that, he ignored the humans, pulling the Doctor back when she tried to talk to Kane. He looked her over. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, clearly tired, but still going. “I will be once we get back. Just hate that this was all for nothing.”

“Not nothing,” he said optimistically. “We lost a human _and_ Hyph3n-with-a-3. I call that a net gain.”

Suddenly, one of the humans he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of grabbed Kane’s gun, turning it on her. “You're not getting out of anywhere.”

The Master arched a brow, smiling. “Oh, this just got interesting.”

The Doctor ran forward, holding a hand out. “Bella! What are you doing?”

Bella ignored her. “Where's the maintenance teleport, Kane?”

“I'd rather die than tell you.” 

“Oh, you're _going_ to die,” Bella said, growing manic. He admired that. “It's just whether I shoot and kill you now, or wound you and leave you to the Dregs.”

Kane shook her head. “What do you want?”

Bella stepped forward, her finger on the trigger. “To burn _everything_ you've built to the ground.”

Kane seemed more confused than scared. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“Me?” Bella laughed. “I'm no one. I _was_ my dad's carer.” Her eyes were wet. “You know, my mum didn't really die. She just never came to any of my birthdays. She didn't come to his funeral.” She stared Kane straight in the eye. “And she doesn't even recognize me now.”

“Oh no,” the Master said distastefully. “Family drama. Dull.” Much less interesting, though not without its merits.

Kane paled, seeing her daughter for the first time. “The teleport's behind you.”

Bella turned, lowering her gun for a moment, giving Kane enough time to grab another—

The Doctor tried to jump in between them, stopped at the last second by the Master’s arm across her chest. “ _Do not._ ”

She sighed, looking between the two women who had their guns pointed at each other. “Come on! Whatever happened to good old-fashioned passive-aggressive discussion?”

Of course, then they saw the Dreg that had managed to follow them, and it was all a bit of a moot point.

* * *

After that, it was a matter of running, locking doors behind them, and trying not to die. 

The Doctor was slowing down, her oxygen canister blinking yellow. “I’m using too much . . .”

The Master sighed. _How did my life get to this?_ He detached his own canister and strapped it around her free wrist, trailing his fingers over her skin to speak to her. _Respiratory bypass. You need it more than me now. Try not to die._

For a moment, she just looked stunned. “Thank you.”

_What did I say? Stop talking!_

She rolled her eyes. They kept moving. The old woman died. Shame, that. There was a weathered old sign in Russian. That would have made him laugh if he could breathe.

Silent, they passed through a Dreg nest, unconsciously walking in time with each other. And of course the Doctor got too close to one, as she was wont to—

The Doctor breathed in deep as she stood inches from the mouth of a dreg, her oxygen lights going from yellow back to green. She smiled, that face she got whenever she saw something that was _fascinating_ or _fantastic_ or _brilliant_ or whatever word she was using this time around. 

She tossed his canister back to him. “They breathe the carbon dioxide in and oxygen out. Oh, this is _brilliant—_ ”

The Dreg’s black eyes burst open, and its hand shot out, wrapping around her throat—

It took less than a second for him to raise his gun and shoot, slicing the arm off at the shoulder. He helped her back up as the thing screeched at them. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” he said as they took off again. “Only I get to do that to you.”

“What, just defending your territory then?”

“Yes.”

They made it back to the resort and the others, blocking the path off behind them with whatever they could. 

“We have to get to the command center,” the Master said, wincing when a Dreg pushed against the door, making the vending machine they’d shoved against it hit him in the back. “We need the teleporter, and we can’t hold this.”

“He’s right,” the Doctor said, looking like she was about to pass out. “When I say run, _run._ ” They shoved the machine back against the door. Then . . . “ _Run!_ ”

They sprinted with whatever energy they had left, almost flying down the hallways. Bella, the engineer, and his son were already in the room.

The Doctor checked the screens, leaning against his side. “Ionic membrane’s down, teleporter’s down, we’re on phantom power, and they’re massing outside.”

He surprised himself by squeezing her hand. “We’ve had worse odds.” He nodded to the engineer. “You, green-haired human. Can you fix the teleport?”

Before the Master had even finished his sentence, the man was shaking his head. “No way, I'm—”

“The only one who knows how that thing works,” the Doctor said sharply, glaring at him. 

“I know, but the bounce capacitor is completely blown and the only fuel we've got left is syrillium-3, which isn't enough to get us off-planet! We need syrillium-4.”

The Time Lords spoke at the same time. “Which is what syrillium-3 mutates into when it's attacked by the hopper virus.”

The Doctor pulled out the crisps bag she’d put the virus in hours ago. At the same time, the child, apparently fed up with his father’s stupidity, tried to run outside, but the Master spun around, grabbing his arm. “ _Listen to me_ ,” he said, filling his voice with more power than was probably needed. “You are going to stay with the adults and be very quiet and well-behaved and _not_ go running off into the jaws of the things that want to kill us. If you don't, I will personally nail you to a wall outside, just high enough that they'll get your legs before anything else. You'll live to _feel_ them eating you, and when you scream, no one will come to help. Do you understand?"

Sylas nodded in obvious fear, running back to his father as soon as the Master let go of him. 

_Wow_ , the Master thought to himself with a slight smile. _I’m ready to be a dad again._

The Doctor shook her head at him, too tired or too busy to scold his poor behavior at the moment. “We have one advantage over them. _Oxygen_. This whole dome is air-conditioned, if I can up the oxygen levels, the Dregs will be weakened and we'll get out of here.” She was saying on her feet, but no less convincing or powerful for it. “Nevi, Sylas, get on the syrillium, then go to the transporter. Yaz, Ryan, the Dregs are going to attack the one place where the dome wall meets the hotel: the steam room. Keep them at bay and buy us some time. Graham, Bella, you're with Nevi. The Master and I'll try and boost the oxygen levels. Everyone, regroup at the teleport.” She took out her sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the lock. “ _Now._ ”

They do just that, scurrying around the resort fiddling with pipes and machines and computers until the air is so oxygen-rich, _they_ could barely breathe it.

The Doctor was panting, one hand skimming the walls in an attempt to stay upright. The Master pulled her to the door. “C’mon, Doctor, we can go now.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m so tired. Master, my legs . . .”

“Do I have to do everything?” he asked irritably before reaching down to bend her over his shoulder, her hands scrambling over his back and her feet at his stomach. “Lucky you haven’t put on weight yet.”

She muttered something that was either an insult or a compliment, he always got them mixed up. Then he was moving again, not fast really, but fast enough to get them out of the building before it spontaneously exploded (thanks, Bella’s bombs) which would have to do. When they were outside, he set her down on her feet by the teleporter. 

At her insistence, they send the kid through first. As soon as he could, he pushed her forward. They looked at each other, and he won’t admit that he wanted to kiss her. “See you on the other side.”

* * *

“You must have hated that,” the Master said cheerily, pushing her shirt over her stomach. “A bunch of mutated humans trying to kill us all. Almost worth leaving the species alive.” He lowered the scanner over her still-flat stomach. 

“Shut it,” she said, lying on her back in an infirmary bed. “That was just one possible future and you know it.”

He was in a good enough mood to let it go for the time being, instead turning his eyes upon the monitor standing near her. Though she tried to shield it, he can feel the anxiety pouring off of her in waves. She was worried that all her running had caught up with her.

“You’re good,” he said, his eyes making out the minuscule spot on the screen. Still there, despite the day’s efforts. 

The Doctor dropped her head on the bed. “Thank the stars.” She waits for when he’s not paying attention to her to look at her. Frowned. “What—”

He held up a finger. “Shh. Listen.”

She sat up some. Closed her eyes and focused.

 _Bum-bum bum-bum._ A drumming sound in a pattern of four, then a brief pause before starting up again.

“Heartbeats.” She didn’t try to stop her smile. The sound was quiet, imperceptible to most ears, but they are not most people.

Her smile faded when she saw him, _properly_ saw him. He’s turned away from her, but she could tell his eyes were shining. She realized too late. “Master, the drums . . .”

He shook his head. His smile was genuine. “It’s perfect, Doctor.”


	4. But How Does One Shower A Baby That Isn't Born Yet?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to be pure fluff but emotions happened  
> my bad

_1.5 Months_

"Do you know what I'm craving?"

The Master leaned over to look down at her. The Doctor was working on the engines, wearing a pair of oversized goggles pulled over her eyes and thick gloves. He ignored her, reading his magazine.

The Doctor pouted. "You're supposed to say 'what'."

He sighed, dramatically tossing his magazine to the floor and looking at her. "What?"

"Glad you asked." She leaned on a wall to look up at him properly. "I was thinking of those fruit trees that used to grow at your house? The ones with the poisonous spines and your dad would tell us not to climb in the trees so we wouldn't knick ourselves and die? Then I did exactly that and had to go to the hospital?"

". . . Yes."

"Exactly, those! Bezais! Oh, I bet they'd make the _best_ ice cream! So sweet!"

He fought a smile. "Well, we're not going to Gallifrey just so you can get some fruit. I doubt they'd let you have any in a jail cell."

She pouted at him. "You mean you won't even _try?_ "

Before he could give in respond, the Tardis door opened, allowing Yaz in. She stopped when she saw the Doctor standing in what looked like a hole in the floor, but quickly shrugged it off. "Right, bit of a problem."

"Ooh!" The Doctor set her arms on the floor and leveled herself up, closing the entry to the engines behind her. "Are the spiders back? Cybermen in the streets? Raxacoricofallapatorian—"

"No, nothing like that." She sat in the seat next to the Master, taking his coat and tossing it at him. He stared at her, twitching. She ignored him. "I was talking to my mum—

"Oh, how is Najia?"

"She's good, but she asked me how you were, and I let it slip that you're pregnant." 

The Doctor shrugged, not really seeing the problem. "That's fine. It's not really a secret." She found herself standing in front of the Master, unsurprised when he slipped an arm around her waist possessively, one hand settled on her stomach. "Y'know, except from the people who would arrest me for it, but otherwise we're good."

"I know, but then she started asking questions, and she wanted to know if you were having a baby shower." The Doctor frowned, but didn't interrupt. "And I told her you probably weren't going to have one because you don't have any family you're close to or a lot of friends—"

The Master muttered, "This would be hilarious if I didn't know where it was going."

"—and she made me feel guilty about not throwing you one. So now my mum and I are hosting a baby shower for you."

The Doctor shrugged, seeming confused. "I mean, it's a lovely thought Yaz, but how exactly are you gonna wash a baby that isn't born yet?"

". . . Doctor—"

* * *

"Alright, let's go over the rules again."

The Master rolled his eyes. "No killing, torturing, tricking, manipulating, shrinking, breaking, screaming, mind fuckery, etcetera." He double-checked that the TCE she didn't know about was in his pocket. "Now yours."

She shifted in place, spreading her fingers over the bottom of the platter. "No talking about aliens, Time Lords, or anything else that'll make people suspicious."

"I guess we'll both just have to do our best."

She scowled at him, but then he knocked on the door and they both had to school their faces into smiles. “Hello again, Najia!” She held out their offering. “Made custard creams, thought you might like it.”

“Oh,” Najia said with a friendly, mildly confused smile. “You didn’t have to do that, dear, it’s your party.” She seemed to be happier than the last time the Doctor had seen her. Which probably made sense, since she’d lost her job and there had been giant spiders everywhere. Enough to make anyone upset. “Come in.”

Yaz and Sonia were putting plates down at the kitchen table, framed as it was by an array of blue and pink balloons. Ryan and Graham were there, setting out an array of finger foods, sandwiches, and fruit and vegetable platters.

“I know it’s not much,” Najia started.

The Master turned around to look at her with a friendly, almost adorable smile. “It’s fantastic, Mrs. Khan. Really, the Doctor was just so excited, I’m surprised she hasn’t exploded already.”

The Doctor can’t help but look at him. It’s as though a flip had switched, from conquering Time Lord always one step away from blowing up, to . . . well, to _O_.

Najia smiled, reaching out to shake his hand. “Thank you. And I’m guessing you’re the . . .”

“Father,” he said, looking at the Doctor with such sweet eyes that she wanted to strangle him. “I’m . . .” They seemed to realize at the same time that they never actually thought up a fake backstory for the Master. Which was a massive oversight since that was ninety percent of what he did. “. . . Oliver.”

_Oh, you arse._

They settled down in the kitchen because she hadn’t eaten yet and could smell those custard creams from a thousand miles away. The Master spoke as she ate, and she could practically feel the glee rolling off of him as he told Najia in the others that he was working in MI5 ( _“It’s more boring than it sounds, mostly just security and deskwork”_ ) when he’d met the Doctor on assignment. “We had to go undercover for a bit.”

“And you said it was boring,” Najia teased, enjoying one of the few biscuits that had gone unscathed by the Doctor’s craving. 

The Master laughed politely before continuing. “Well, I saw her in a tux, and I guess I fell a bit in love right then.”

He was smiling at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate. How could she? It was the first time he’d said he loved her in two thousand years.

“Actually,” she said, setting down the biscuit she’d been set on devouring before her appetite suddenly abandoned her, “I’m feeling kind of tired. Might have to leave soon.”

The Master made a good show of seeming concerned, but for the others at least, it seemed to be real. “You alright, Doc?” Ryan asked.

It was an effort to smile. “Yeah, of course! Pregnancy is just exhausting, need all sort of extras now. Sleep, oxygen, waistband length. You know how it is.”

Najia nodded sympathetically while her daughters looked awkward. “I understand. I’d hate for you to leave before you could open any gifts, though.”

The Master subtly brushed his hand over hers, his mind reaching out. _Are you actually alright? Is the baby okay?_

Her throat tightened. She reminded herself that he didn’t care about her, not really, not anymore. His thoughtfulness was saved only for the children they shared, and this one just so happened to be inside her.

 _Fine._ As soon as she thought it, she blocked him off, strengthening the shields around her mind until they were stronger than the dome around a Gallifreyan city. The Master blinked, unable to hide his surprise, but quickly brushed it off, leaning back and away from her.

Luckily, there weren’t many things to open. Ryan and Sonia had both gotten packs of newborn-sized nappies ( _“It seemed practical!”_ ). Najia’d bought a set of baby bottles, which the Doctor immediately fell in love with when she saw the pink elephants on them (she could tell the Master found them ridiculous, which she loved even more). Yaz had found a blue-and-white blanket with a pattern of constellations on it, and she could tell that the Master _actually_ seemed to like it, even though they obviously could not compare to _Gallifreyan_ constellations.

Despite her genuine delight, the Doctor could feel herself growing more tired as the day wore on. _Questions_ , people kept asking them _questions._ _Do you know what the gender is?_ No, and she didn’t know the sex either, and should she? _Do you have any baby furniture?_ Just a single two-thousand-year-old cradle too full of memories to use. _Have you thought of names?_ Only in passing. _Do you know where they’re going to go to school?_ Definitely not the Academy, they’d done that with their first two, and Helio had run crying to them after looking into the Time Vortex—

Thankfully there was only one more thing to go, this one from Graham. She opened it fast, ripping away the yellow wrapping paper that was covered in teddy bears, and who ever thought of that? Bear toys for children, sounds terrifying—

When she saw what it was, she stopped, staring. It was a wrap-style carrier that would let the baby rest against her chest once they were born. It was purple.

Graham, perhaps noticing her expression, moved to explain. “I was just gonna pick up some nappies—” Ryan looked offended, “—but I saw that in the store, and . . . well, it seemed like the sort of thing that Grace would’ve given you.”

The Doctor stared at the baby carrier, not noticing how her eyes grew wet. “So I can hold them against me with their little baby head over my heart . . . and keep them safe . . .” She covered her mouth, surprised by her own tears. 

In a moment’s time, everyone was leaning in, asking if she was okay. The Master was beside her, a hand gently sweeping the hair from her face. “What’s wrong, love?”

That made it worse. She didn't know why it ached. He had always been better at pretending than her, slipping on bodies and faces and personalities like they were clothes. But not around _her_ , or at least not once she’d figured him out and ripped around the disguise. She knew him, not just because they’d been friends as children, but because he _let her_ , because they’d shown each other parts of themselves that no one else knew. Now everything was clouded, and fake, and emotional in a different sort of way, and _why was she crying again—_

“I can take it back,” Graham said, growing desperate. “There are other colors!”

She made herself laugh, suddenly aware of how worried everyone was, how they were staring at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just — hormones, isn’t that something pregnant women say? That’s it, right, I’m hormonal?” She stood up and pulled Graham in for a hug. “It’s perfect, Graham.” She turned, seeing the Master stare at her with guarded eyes that nonetheless let the tiniest sliver of sadness through. “Absolutely perfect.”

* * *

"And we have to make a list of things we need, alright,” the Doctor said as they piled back into the Tardis, still feeling embarrassed by her outburst earlier and more than a little worried about how unprepared they were. “I’ll start now: pram, cradle, bassinet, changing table, clothes, toys, car seat—”

“Doctor,” the Master said, snappish after a long afternoon surrounded by _humans_ , “we don’t have a _car_.”

“Doctor?”

They both freeze immediately. She can’t move, doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to face the person standing behind her, not _here_ , not like this, not with the Master standing right beside her—

She whipped around with a smile. “Martha Jones! What are you doing here?”

Martha stared at her, shock obvious on her face. “UNIT’s been out for a while now, so Mickey and I are in London until we figure things out. I was walking by, saw the Tardis, saw you.” She looked the Doctor up and down. “Is it really you? You’ve . . . changed.”

“I know! I’m a woman know.” She swished her coat around to show off her new form. “Nice, isn’t it?”

“Right. And . . . how exactly . . .” She shook her head. “You know, don’t answer that.” She looked at the box in the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor had a moment to think, _ELEPHANT BOTTLES_ , before her former companion said, “Oh my God. Are you . . .”

She tried to think of something, but for once, her mind was a complete blank. Forced to concede defeat, she nodded. “Yes, it’s true. I am expecting. Pregnant. With child. I’m—”

“Yeah, I get it.” She laughed. “Wow, you really _have_ changed.” She looked past the Doctor to, O _h no_ , “I’m sorry, we haven’t met. You’re . . .”

The Master stared at her for a moment with carefully concealed anger before breaking into a smile. “Oliver. A friend of the Doctor’s.” He gestured back to the Tardis with his thumb. “Want to come in for a cuppa, catch up with the Doc?”

She glared at him when Martha couldn’t see, projecting her thoughts. _I’m going to_ **_strangle_ ** _you later!_

He smiled at her. _Promise?_

She stamped down on her growing irritation and tiredness, somehow managing to remain upbeat as they sat down in the downstairs/upstairs kitchen. The Master was the picture of cheery politeness, making tea for the three of them as the Doctor monitored his every move, swapping fake stories for Martha’s real ones from UNIT and her time aboard the Tardis, grinning toothily and laughing at all the right places. She wanted him to scream, to get angry and froth at the mouth. She didn’t care if she shouldn’t want it, shouldn’t want _him_ , if he would just be _real—_

“I should get going,” Martha said, standing to put her cup in the sink. “I was supposed to be home an hour ago.”

 _Oh, thank the stars._ “I’ll walk you out.” She waited until Martha was past the kitchen door to mouth at the Master, _Don’t you DARE try anything._

He smirked back and didn’t respond.

She kept up a running commentary on the way out, talking about how Gallifrey was back, and her new companions, and this excellent frozen yogurt place on New New New York—

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

The Doctor stopped, surprised by the chill in her voice. “What?”

“It’s the Master?” She was staring at the Doctor, eyes dark and blank. “In there? He’s the one who . . .” She gestured to the Doctor’s stomach. The silence was answer enough. “Wow.” She laughed, almost hysterical. “Wow! Oh, Doctor, you never cease to surprise me!"

“Martha—”

“No, don’t tell me!” She snapped, not hiding her anger. “Don’t try to justify yourself to me! God, how could you— you _know!_ You _know_ what he did! To me, to my family, to Jack, to the whole damn planet! But it doesn’t matter to you, does it? Even then, while my mother stood crying after being held captive for a _year_ , you _begged_ him to live for you, would’ve kept him on the same Tardis he cannibalized!”

“You _don’t understand—”_

“I understand perfectly, _Doctor_. The rest of us, your little human companions, _we_ can be discarded and lied to and replaced. But _him_ , he’s _special_ , he’s your _friend_. What are millions of lives compared to that?”

She tried to speak, but no words came. It wasn’t true—

But wasn’t it? In a way? She always forgave him, no matter what he did. Martha wasn’t the first and she hadn’t been the last. Even Clara seemed like a fading dream, her face forgotten when she left Gallifrey. After that, it had been so easy to take Missy back, try to reform her. That had failed, but here she was again, desperately trying to fix what was broken.

Martha shook her head. “I’m gonna go home. But you better keep him in that box, Doctor. Because if I ever see him on this planet again, I’ll kill him.”

* * *

She collapsed into bed, kicking her boots off and hugging her pillow to her face. The day had been exhausting even before Martha showed up, and she fully expected to have another fourteen-hour nap. 

So of course someone knocked on her door.

“It’s open,” she shouted into her pillow, which seemed to be enough. She didn’t bother to look up, sensing the Master’s mind. He settled down on the bed beside her, setting something next to her pillow. She looked up. “What’s this?”

“I spent the past two hours looking through old rooms on this thing you call a Tardis.” He held up a deep-red fruit from the basket he’d brought, its spines cut off and the skin washed. “Found a couple of trees Selene and I planted one day. After her graduation?”

She smiled, remembering. It had been one of the very few times he’d come on this Tardis after they separated without trying to steal it or kill her. And Selene had always loved that fruit. “We were trying to make things work.”

“Yeah. Well, that didn’t happen, but the trees are still there. You said you were craving them.”

She accepted the bezai fruit, her fingers brushing over his. “Thank you.”

He stood, walking to the door. “Don’t worry about.”

She wanted to ask him to stay. She didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the boy is BACK, back again
> 
> Can't wait to see the Master with one of [these](https://www.target.com/p/baby-k-39-tan-original-baby-carrier-black-medium/-/A-14116168?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&fndsrc=tgtao&CPNG=PLA_Baby%2BShopping_Brand&adgroup=SC_Baby&LID=700000001170770pgs&network=g&device=c&location=9067609&ds_rl=1242884&ds_rl=1246978&ds_rl=1246978&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnL7yBRD3ARIsAJp_oLaquJSUVYS4CdFxbnl_d6x_FJz21cwMWa5EHHuyKajmnn9t9pKX4d4aAp30EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) in the next episode.


	5. Gilt Is Not, In Fact, Gold

_Memories I._

“Theta?”

Eyes wide, he quickly threw the sonic device he’d been working on under the blanket, sitting on top and wincing as he worried he hadn’t broken it. “Come in.” 

His mother stepped inside, only a step from the door. The barn was tiny and run down, but she retained the regal bearing of their ancestors, as did everyone in the House of Lungbarrow. 

It was suffocating. This entire place felt too small, too closed in. He couldn’t wait to go back to the Academy, which was not a sentence he would ever say out loud. Yes, it was the _Academy_ , but at least Koschei was there. 

Speaking of . . . “Did you talk to the Chancellor?”

“I did,” she said, hands folded in front of her. “Theta, you must understand, he is an old and proud man, and the House of Oakdown is . . . _beyond_ arrogant. I spoke to him more than a dozen times over the last cycle, and the other heads of his house, and I even called upon all ten of your grandparents to speak to them . . .”

Theta’s heart dropped. He didn’t know why he was surprised. It had been a lot to ask of his mother in the first place. He _knew_ that the Chancellor would reject him, that Koschei’s father was a classist, stubborn old man, they _both_ knew. _Whatever._ They’d already agreed that if an arranged marriage couldn’t be made then they’d elope. Soon they’d graduate and Koschei would have a Tardis, and yes, it would mean being shunned on Gallifrey and they wouldn’t have access to either of their families’ looms, but—

“And he said yes.”

Theta stopped, stared. “Are you kidding?”

“I don’t _kid_ , Theta Sigma.” But there it was, the barest hint of a smile.

Theta didn’t bother with _hints_. He grinned wide and openly, jumping up from the bed (and, oh, that was definitely broken now) and hugged his mother as he hadn’t since he was eight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” He ran around the room, finding his boots and pulling them on. “I have to go talk to him!” He grabbed his coat and bag and ran from the room, quickly whirling around on the stairs. 

“Theta, do not run—”

She sighed when she heard her son yelp and fall down the stairs, getting up a moment later and running off like it was nothing.

* * *

_2 Months_

“What are you thinking about?” the Master asked in a bored tone, looking in the mirror to straighten his purple cravat.

She blinked, shocked back into reality. “Remembering.”

“Ew. Don’t do that.” He whirled his top hat before putting it on. “Why don’t we ever go anywhere I want to see?”

“You wanted to meet Genghis Khan.” She hadn’t dressed for the period they were traveling to. She never did, and she never used perception filters. Especially now that she was a woman, it seemed like a poor choice, but he didn’t bother arguing with her. It would just frustrate him, and they were both hoping for a good day. 

“ _Visit_ , Doctor. Am I not allowed to see my husband now?” 

“When did you marry _Genghis Khan?_ ”

He smiled, curling an arm around her waist. “After the cemetery and before you sent me your confession dial. Thought I’d try to see what you like about these humans so much.”

She made sure she had a bottle of water, two bananas, and a bezai in her pockets, because the last time she hadn’t eaten in a while he almost murdered the poor waiter who came to check on them. “How’d you find them?”

He shrugged, and they started walking down the hall. “He was fine. Fun. I liked him more than Ivan the Terrible. That one was way too paranoid, it made manipulating him too easy.”

She looked at him sharply. “You didn’t.”

He grinned, a mix between his adorable _O_ smile and the tooth-baring I’m-about-to-rip-your-throat out smile. “Let’s just say that his son should have minded his step-mother.”

She sighed, looking away from him. “Don’t know why I keep asking you questions.”

“Neither do I at this point. It just upsets you.”

* * *

They made it about ten minutes before something happened. He suggested they return to the Tardis and leave the humans to die. He was denied.

“Will I at least get to kill something this time?”

The Doctor looked at him with annoyance, ignoring the way her companions stared at him. “You killed several dregs on Orphan 55.”

“That’s not the same. I want to kill something sentient, that’s _aware_ of me killing it.”

“Well, just _wait and see!_ ”

He said something to her in Gallifreyan, she shouted back, and then a cloaked assassin was chasing them, and then they were running and it didn’t seem worth the oxygen to argue while running. 

Luckily, there was a train that could get them away quickly. Unluckily, the Doctor went off on her own and somehow came back with Nikola Tesla and his assistant. _Honestly, that is so like her._

“Here we go!” she said, showing their ‘guests’ into the train car they were occupying. “Full speed, straight to New York, right on schedule.”

“Did you find out what was causing this energy thing, then?” Ryan asked, sitting on a crate with his chin in his hand, seeming awfully bored for someone in the middle of an investigation into alien energies in 1903 New York. 

“No, just these two.”

“Oh,” the Master said, faux-casual. “So you ran off on your own into potential danger for no real reason then.”

“Hey, these two might’ve died if I hadn’t got there in time!”

“Like I said. No real reason.”

She ignored him, taking a moment to introduce all the humans to each other before turning to Tesla. “Why don't you tell me who you are and who's shooting at you?”

“I assure you,” Tesla said, “I have no idea.”

“Oh. You know, I always wanted to meet you. Bit of a shame you're a big fat liar.”

“Is she always so impertinent?” Dorothy, Tesla’s secretary, asked.

“Yes,” the Master said without hesitation. “And if you talk about her like that again, I’ll throw you off this train.”

“Pardon—”

The train suddenly stopped, knocking everyone either to the floor or into a wall. The door to the car opened, rather dramatically revealing someone in a pitch-black cloak staring at them before raising a gun.

The Doctor and the Master reached for each other at the same time, quickly regaining their footing as they started to run. _Again._ They raced through the train cars, the humans a step ahead and their pursuer a step behind. They got far enough that the Doctor managed to slam a door behind her, sonicing it locked. 

They kept going until the Doctor stopped to look around, noticing how the banging had stopped. “Why is it so quiet?”

Two seconds later, the attacker dropped in from a hole in the roof, which explained it.

The Master moved first, reaching into one of his pockets and grabbing the first weapon he found stashed away in there, which happened to be a laser screwdriver. He shot the thing in one go, but while it fell to the ground, it was still moving. Which meant that it was either _very_ resilient, or the Doctor had ‘adjusted’ his screwdriver and put it back without telling him. Both seemed equally plausible and equally annoying.

The Doctor quickly reached down to get the gun the thing had dropped. “I’ll take that!” She pushed the Master forward. “All of you, keep going!”

They did as she said, each of them jumping to the next car. He made sure she got through first, watching with a hard-to-kill sense of worry as she did, the wheels railway racing under her feet. When she was done, he moved quickly, joining the others on the other sad before falling to his knees and trying to wrench the couplers apart.

The Doctor held the gun up, taunting their attacker as it looked on. “Missing something?”

This was _not_ the right thing to say, as it made the thing raise a hand and start to generate _red lightning_ in its palm. 

She started to panic then, dropping a hand onto his shoulder and yelling, “Hurry up!”

“It’s rusted together— got it!” The couplers came undone, and the train cars that had been behind them slid away, growing slower as they moved forward.

Satisfied that they weren’t going to die yet, the Master stood up, narrowing his eyes at the Doctor. “Did you mess with my screwdriver?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Didn’t trust you with it.”

After a moment, he shrugged. “Probably smart.” He looked at the gun she was holding. “Now, why would a non-Silurian be using a Silurian blaster?”

* * *

Nikola Tesla was still being a liar and refused to explain why the strange signal they’d picked up on earlier was at both his Niagra generator and on the train with him. And since the Doctor refused to let the Master take the information from his mind, they had to follow him to his lab instead. 

“Gilded Age New York!” The Doctor said to her companions as they followed Tesla. “This is when the modern world begins! New ideas, new technologies, new skyscrapers. More people getting rich quick, and more poor people than ever before.”

Her enthusiasm was cut short when they made it to Tesla’s lab and saw a group of more than thirty people outside, chanting, “ _No to the death current, no AC! No to the death current, no AC!_ ”

“Oh, there are protestors,” the Master said, delighted. “I bet I could start a riot.”

“Don’t even try!”

“What if I behave for the rest of the day? Then can I start a riot?”

“No! No riots! Add it to your rules!”

Tesla averted his eyes as the protestors saw him, yelling in his face and angrily asking questions. If you listened to them, he was a lunatic from Mars who had started an earthquake and was building weapons that could destroy the city, all of which would have much improved the Master’s view of him if it were true.

Once inside, it didn’t take long for Tesla to storm off, clearly more affected than he wanted them to see. The Master soundly ignored him. He was smart enough for a human, but that had never been the Time Lord’s standard.

His lab was an even bigger letdown, although the sheer abundance of rugs _was_ nice, he had to admit. He’d always liked a good rug.

He was still admiring the rugs while the Doctor rambled on about Tesla’s so-called genius — and why didn’t she ever do that for _him?_ He’d invented loads of things, and some of them had nearly killed her for good — and kept doing so until Tesla came back in, holding out a glowing silver-and-green orb. “Doctor? I believe you wanted to see this.”

The Doctor practically pounced, obviously fascinated. “This is what you found in the generator? Giving off all that energy, but why?”

The orb moved, almost graceful as it lifted into the air and above her head. “You see how it moves independently?” Tesla said. “I believe this is something I like to call _remote control_.”

“Remote control?” Ryan asked, since apparently history hadn’t been his strong suit. “You came up with that?”

Tesla nodded. “I believe this is operating on a similar principle. If we could just work out its purpose—”

“Oh, I know what it is,” the Doctor said. “It's an Orb of _Thassor_. But I've no idea what it's doing _here_!” She raised her hand, allowing the sphere to settle itself into her palm. “The Thassor were one of the ancient races. Amazing storytellers, inventors, explorers. They built these orbs as a way to spread information, to send out among the stars as a way to share their legacy long after they were gone!”

Yaz frowned in confusion. “But why would someone try to kill us for that? It’s not a weapon or anything.”

“No idea,” the Doctor said, scanning it with her sonic. Her nose did that cute little scrunchy-thing that he liked. “I think it's been repurposed, but I can't work out what it's doing instead. Something this elegant shouldn't be giving off this kind of noise.”

“That instrument detects energy?” Tesla asked, awed. “Is this your own design?”

Personally, the Master thought that the way that the human proceeded to gush over the Doctor’s supposed genius was a very inappropriate way to behave towards someone else’s wife.

He was deciding whether or not it was worth waiting for the Doctor to leave to throw Tesla out the window when Dorothy arrived with a letter in hand. “Sir, this was just delivered. It's from Mister Morgan.”

“Excellent,” Tesla said, taking the letter with a smile. “Mister Morgan is the investor behind my Wardenclyffe project. With his help, we . . .” His smile dropped as he scanned the letter. “He's pulling the funding.”

The Doctor quickly covered the Master’s mouth before he could laugh. He licked her hand.

Tesla was whining again when a flash went off outside a window, immediately followed by a man taking off in a run down the street.

The Doctor dropped her (now wet and sticky) hand and quickly raised the sonic, scanning before checking the results. “Human.”

“Who was that?” one of the companion humans asked. The Master sometimes forgot which was which. Three was far too many. Really, any more than zero was.

“That was Harold Green,” Dorothy said. “One of Edison's men.”

“As in Thomas Edison?” Yaz (probably) asked. “Light bulb guy?”

“ _Edison_ ,” Tesla grumbled. “Of _course_ it's Edison! He's plagued me every step of my career.”

“Edison champions a rival form of electric current to Mister Tesla's AC,” Dorothy explained helpfully.

“Direct current.” Tesla scoffed. “Of course, he would champion something so slow and inefficient. That man is a _liar_ and a _thief_.”

“Are we saying Thomas Edison is after the Orb of Thassor?” Yaz asked, getting excited. _Humans are impressed by the simplest things. I ought to dangle a set of keys in their faces._

“Don't be daft,” the old companion who’d stolen a pair of his socks and thought he wouldn’t notice said. “How's Edison's men going to get their hands on a Slymurian laser blaster?”

“Silurian,” the Time Lords said at the same time. The Doctor pocketed her sonic before speaking. “Let's go and find out. Yaz, Tesla, and Dororthy, stay here and guard the Orb. Master, Graham, and Ryan with me. I think it’s time we paid a visit to Mister Thomas Edison.”

* * *

“ _AC is the most deadly force known to science_ ,” the Master muttered mockingly as they entered Edison’s lab. “ _I’m_ the most deadly force known to science.”

“‘Course you are, dear,” the Doctor said, looking around. It was more of a factory than anything, with dozens of human-machines at work. On one wall, the words _EDISON BRINGS LIGHT_ were spelled out in lightbulbs. “Only person I can think of who likes themselves more than him is you.”

That one made him laugh, he wouldn’t deny it.

They made their way to Edison’s office. Ryan laid the blaster down on his desk (for some reason, the Master wasn’t allowed to carry it). 

“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Edison lied, having recognized it a moment earlier outside. “Is it your design? Who has the patent?”

“This isn't a business opportunity!” the Doctor said, seeming as annoyed with the human as her husband always was. “Someone tried to _shoot us with it_ just before we caught an employee of yours spying on Nikola Tesla. Someone's trying to steal from him, and he seems pretty sure it's _you_.”

“Does he, now?” Edison said, unimpressed. “Ma'am, I may keep an eye on my rivals, but I do not steal. I have no need to. There are a thousand patents in the Edison name. You might have seen it on the building.”

“That's not how Tesla sees it,” Ryan(?) pointed out.

Edison chuckled. “He's sore about the past. I gave him a job when he first arrived in this country on the factory floor. He heard me say I'd pay fifty thousand dollars to the man who could fix my generator. He worked on that thing day and night for a year, and he did it.”

“And _you_ ,” Graham said sarcastically, “being the upstanding businessman, paid every last cent, I presume.”

“I offered him a ten buck raise. He quit and chose to dig ditches for two bucks a day.” He shrugged. “Man just didn't understand the American sense of humour.”

The Master grinned. “Wow. That’s an inspiring story. Can I get an autograph?”

The Doctor just sighed tiredly in his general direction before taking out her screwdriver and scanning the room. She frowned at the results. “Something's wrong.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Oh, I should say.” Edison leaned forward in his chair, looking at the Doctor. “We've done this dance for long enough. Now, what have you done with my man, huh?” They looked back blankly. “Oh, don't play dumb!” He stood, walking around his desk until he was staring the Doctor in the face. “He was keeping tabs on that dog-and-pony show of Tesla's at Niagara. Now he's gone quiet, the very day _you_ show up pointing the finger? You don’t think that sounds suspicious?”

The Master looked past his shoulder, dryly remarking, “I’d be more worried about _that_ , personally.” Which seemed like good advice since the man in the doorway had glowing red eyes and was snarling at them. He was getting pretty good at this helpful thing.

* * *

Aliens who could disguise themselves and look like anyone and were surprisingly easy to trap. Honestly, he’d been hoping for a bit _more_.

Also, Tesla and Yaz had been taken, but he didn’t really consider that to be his problem.

The Doctor ran around the console, flipping switches and messing with buttons and generally trying to seem like she knew what she was doing. “But where did they take them? We know they've got cloaking tech, but if I rig a bypass—”

“We can shut it down at the cause and trace whatever information it’s sending out.” The Master wrenched a bit of piping from between the engines and the console, tossing it to her. “Try that, it’ll work better.”

The Doctor stared at him for a moment. “Okay.”

The Master smiled (always a bad sign). “What? Do you not trust me to help.”

“No.”

The smile transformed into an all-out grin. “Smart. Try it anyway.”

Despite her (entirely valid) concerns, she did so, sliding to the side to allow him to help, moving around each other in perfect tandem, like when they experimented together back at the Academy. 

_Best not to think about that._ “Right.” She put the orb into place. “Please don’t blow up, please don’t blow up . . .” 

“Oh, come on Doctor,” the Master said from right next to her. “I wouldn’t make something just to have it blow up in my own face.”

“Yes you would.”

“. . . Yes, but not this time.”

She was about to snark back when the orb whirred, projecting images onto one of the Tardis walls. It only took a moment for her to realize what was happening. “That's why they left it behind! It's been hacked. It's not broadcasting anymore, it's _receiving_.” Images from the twentieth century flashed by in black-and-white. “It's been scanning the Earth since it got here.”

“Thought so,” Graham lied. “Bugging device, moment I saw it.”

“Exactly!” She sonicked the image, stepping back. “And it finally found what it's been looking for.”

Tesla. _Shocker._

A quick trip to Wardenclyffe allowed them to find Tesla’s so-called Mars signal. Actually a Skritha code, but what could you expect from humans?

The Doctor held the paper up before looking to the Master. “Do you have a bouncer? Braxium, Venusian, anything?”

“You confiscated all my teleports.”

“So do you have one?”

“. . . Yeah, hold on.” He went back to the Tardis, finding a panel on the wall and opening it, quickly pulling what he wanted out before she could see everything that was in there. “Braxium Bouncer, Mark III. This has enough power to transport four people back.”

“Excellent.” She reached to take it from him.

He drew his hand back. “But it will have to recharge itself on the ship, leaving everyone onboard vulnerable until it does.”

“Oh, don’t go getting all protective now!”

He held his hand out of her way. “If I’m right, and I like to think I am, one of our rules was that the pregnant one doesn’t go throwing themself into danger. Now, which one of us was that again?”

He could see the frustration in her eyes as she thought through her options, and the anger when she realized he was right. “ _Fine!_ You’ll go.” She went back to the console, opening a container. “Sonic sunglasses.” She handed one pair to him and put the other on herself. “Go, but I’ll keep an eye on you.”

The Master laughed. “Do you plan to punish me, Doctor?”

She scoffed. “Only if you’re bad.”

“Pity.” He put the glasses on, hearing a _click_ in the back of his head. “You know, it would be easier if we communicate telepathically.”

She looked at him sharply. “ _Don’t._ ” Sentences carefully passed along with faint skin contact was one thing. The vulnerability that came with allowing someone in your mind enough to speak long-distance, see what the other saw, felt what they felt . . . “The last time was Paris, and it was a moment of weakness.” That’s what she told herself, at least.

And that _damn grin_ was back. “Oh, my dear Doctor. Are you weak for me?”

She reached her hand over and activated the bouncer.

* * *

“Oh, that was rude!” the Master shouted. He looked around, clapping his hands theatrically at the sight of the dark-green ship and the hundreds of scorpion aliens that lined the walls. “This is nice! I _love_ what you’ve done with the place! Anyone gonna offer me a cuppa? This is no way to treat a guest.”

The head alien, an ugly black-and-red scorpion thing with what looked like a reject Racnoss-head, hissed at him.

“Sorry? Don’t think that quite got across in translation.” He casually strolled over to where Yaz and Tesla were. “Hello, humans. You’re both going to die.”

“NO THEY’RE NOT!” the Doctor shouted over the glasses.

“C’mon, Doctor, you’re not even here, let me have _some_ fun!” He sighed. “Fine, fine. Yes, I am the rescue party. How the mighty are fallen.”

Yaz was staring at him with wide eyes and a look of horror. “We’re _doomed_.”

“Don’t be gloomy in front of aliens, Yaz, it’s not a pretty picture.” He looked at the vaguely-humanoid alien with a mix of fascination and disdain. “What are you? Some Godzilla reject? You’re in the wrong decade for that.”

“You address the _Queen of the Skithra_!” the Queen (apparently) growled. “You trespass on my ship!”

“Oh, is this your ship?” He looked around again, feigning curiosity. “Because it looks like a very ugly mixture of Venusian, Klendov, and a _touch_ of Sontaran tech. I mean, did you make _any_ of this yourselves? It’s not personalized at all. Kind of tacky, really.”

The Skithra Queen looked at him with something like a smile. “This one is clever. He will assist Tesla.”

“Oh, that is _not_ gonna happen.” Quick as he could, he pulled at his TCE, shrinking the aliens nearest to the Queen. 

Immediately, all of them hissed, shrinking back as their eyes glowed red. 

Yaz was panicking. “WHY ARE YOU PISSING THEM OFF?”

“It’s what I’m good at.” He took down a few off the walls next, sending them scattering to the floor like children’s toys. “And if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Of course, that’s the opposite of your problem— WOAH, HEY, STOP THAT!” He pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead, feeling the Doctor pound on the shields around his mind like she was going to break them down. 

“I sent you to _save_ them, not _make everything worse!_ ”

“ _Yes_ , but you’re not here, love—” Oh hey, the bouncer had recharged. Good for them since he was pretty sure they were about to be swarmed by hundreds of bug aliens, and that was never fun.

* * *

As soon as they reappeared on the Tardis, the Doctor ran forward, tearing the TCE from his hand and throwing it on the ground, stomping on it.

“HEY!”

"I didn't say you could do that!"

"You don't _control me, Doctor!_ " Oh, he wanted to _strangle her_ , to grab and _throttle her_ until she shut up, but he _couldn't_ , and he _hated that._ "I have been on my _BEST! BEHAVIOR!_ I didn't even kill the old one when he stole a pair of _MY_ socks! And now I don't even get to kill these scorpion cunts?!" 

“Not before I give them a second chance!” she snapped, shouting in his face. “I always do that, and you wouldn’t be here if I didn’t!”

A pair of hands appeared in the centimeters between their faces, clapping to get their attention. “Hey!” Yaz shouted, looking at each of them. “Don’t you think we have bigger things to worry about at the moment than your marital issues?”

They stared at each other for another moment before the Doctor said. “Right.” She turned on her heel, making a point to turn her back to him. He repressed a snarl before following.

The Doctor dramatically scanned the orb, still in its little holder, and spoke directly to it. “Listen up, Skithra Queen. This is the Doctor, on behalf of Tesla. Consider this your official eviction notice. Get your ship away from Earth right _now_ , or else.”

“That’s just what I wanted to do with extra steps!”

Everyone shushed him. 

The Skithra Queen responded, “We will take the engineer, or this planet shall _burn!_ Surrender him and your lives may be spared.”

The Doctor looked like she was going to laugh. “You can't have him. He's with us, and we're not going anywhere.”

“Then we will kill all the teeming millions that infect this world, and you and your friends will die _first_. _This_ is the choice you must make. Give us Tesla, or the planet, and all who live on it, shall die.”

Tesla, who only a few moments ago had been in awe of the Tardis and everything inside, now stared at the Doctor with fear . . . and resignation. “It cannot be me or the Earth. You can't place this burden on me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the Master said casually, leaning against a wall. “This is about the time where she figures out a third option.”

* * *

He was right, of course. He’d expected that.

But _how_.

Tesla’s Wardenclyffe tower, once finished (with a little bit of Time Lord help) was capable of producing enough energy to send a bolt of lightning into the sky. Though the aliens gathered outside, as long as the Queen stayed on the ship, they only needed to strike the ship.

That plan was _somewhat_ ruined when the Queen came down to Earth, but only somewhat.

“Was this meant to be your fortress, and you its defenders?” the Queen asked in amusement, walking into Tesla’s lab with her army at her back. “What was the plan? To shiver in the dark until we went away?” Edison attempted to shoot her with one of Tesla’s inventions. She knocked it from his hand with a bolt of energy from her tail. “You are such fragile creatures, aren't you? It's a miracle your world has spun on so long undisturbed.” She faced them. “Now, tell me. Where is he?”

The Doctor stepped forward. The Master tensed, but didn’t try to stop her. He could feel the confidence and brilliance and _anger_ rolling off of her. She never lost, not when she got like this. 

“If you want Tesla, you have to go through me!”

_Okay, maybe this was a bad idea._

“Doctor. Did you really think I'd let you hide away down here, hatching your little plans?”

The Doctor didn’t react to the Queen circling her, seeming more unimpressed than anything. “If I'd known we were going to have a royal visit, I'd have put the kettle on.”

“As Queen, I grant myself the pleasure—” she stopped to smell the Doctor, and he would have attacked then if it hadn’t been for the Doctor quickly projecting the word _STAY_ into his mind, “—and of killing you in person.”

“And what are you Queen of, exactly? A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A Queen of shreds and patches.” She scoffed. “You're not a ruler, you're a _parasite_.”

“And what are you?” the Queen challenged. “So clever, but where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind.”

The Doctor shook her head. Her face was almost a smile. “No, we're way past that. I gave you your chance.”

“A chance to be like you?”

“A chance to _evolve_ , but you were too _stupid_ to take it." She leaned into the Queen's space, her voice low and dark. "When you die, there'll be nothing left behind. Just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

He stared at her, and could not have torn his eyes away if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to. She was beautiful in her quiet rage, and he could have stood and listened to her threaten her enemies for hours, days even.

He was caught up in thinking about how enchanting she would look covered in blood, and everything after that was kind of a blur. A quick bit of misdirection, and the Queen had taken the bouncer and been tricked back onto her ship. Lightning surged through the tower, and the Skithra ship burned and screamed as it was forced away.

He was still thinking of it when they left New York and Tesla and Edison behind. The look on her face, edging close to a manic grin, an expression he knew well. Electricity thrummed over and through his skin, as though he were the one who’d been struck. He could remember regenerating from electrocution once. He knew how painful it was, how you could only focus on the pain. It became the only thing that you could think about, the only thing that existed. Thinking about the Doctor causing something that kind of pain . . . Well. It did things to him. 

He rounded in front of the Doctor, stopping her in her tracks. "Talk in your room? Now?"

She paused, irritated, but nodded. "Yeah, alright." They walked in silence down the hall, the Doctor visibly tense. _I can fix that._

She shut the door behind them, crossing her arms. "I know you're annoyed, but I really don't want to—"

He went to his knees in front of her, slightly pushing her hips back. His fingers went to her trouser buttons.

"What, uh," the Doctor dropped her head on the door, not looking at him. "What are you doing down there?"

He looked up at her. _Really?_ "I was planning on eating you out, love. Why, did you want to play Clue?"

She quickly shook her head. "Definitely not . . . oh . . ."

* * *

She was resting on her stomach, her arm splayed across his chest and her face tucked into the crook of his neck. Their breaths were even, quiet. She could hear his hearts beating.

"Think I like the beard this time around."

She felt his head turn, knew he was looking at her. "Yeah?"

"Hm. Bit of fun."

He chuckled. For once it wasn't mocking. She could have stayed like that for a thousand years.

Apparently, he didn't agree. A few minutes later, he untangled himself from her, throwing his legs over the side of her bed and reaching for the nearest article of clothing. "I need a shower. I'm more sore than that time on Xisa II. _That_ was a good week."

She watched as he got dressed, only pulling on his trousers, shirt, and shoes and hanging the rest over his arm. "See you in the morning."

"Right." For once, she couldn't lie to herself, couldn't pretend was fine. "See you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to have this up on Sunday but life happened, school happened, two essays happened, a lot of stuff HAPPENED okay
> 
> The Master sees even the tiniest opportunity to wear a top hat and immediately pounces on it. I respect that about him.
> 
> He can also semi-consistently remember which one Graham is, but only because he stole his socks
> 
> Mr. Chibnall, sir, I am going to respectfully ignore everything you said in that last episode except the parts that are useful for me
> 
> no one ask what I'm going to do about the Ruth!Doctor because I do not know yet and if I think right now I will die


	6. The Silver Moon Of Gallifrey

_Memories II._

She flinched, sprinting to the other side of the street as the building she'd been standing next to collapsed in on itself. Her lungs burned from the smoke and ash, making her throat feel scratchy and raw. The sky was a blackened red. It was happening. She hadn’t thought it would, but it was. The safest city on Gallifrey had been breached.

Arcadia was falling.

She screamed when something suddenly grabbed her from behind, her cries immediately muffled by a hand covering her mouth. 

The person pulled her back into an alleyway, hissing, "Shhh! Selene, it's me."

She froze, confused. Her mind reached out, seeking her captor. Immediately she slumped in relief. 

The Master released her, and she turned around to face him. There were streaks of dirt on his face, a dash of blood on his brow. Under his cloak, she could tell he was wearing a layer of light Gallifreyan armor. 

"Dad?" Her brow furrowed in confusion. "But you died—"

"Death is for other people, Moonlight." He looked past her to the street. “Come, move quickly.” He started down the alley, head lowered. 

She followed, one hand on his cloak to keep him close. It had been so long since she’d heard that nickname, since she’d even seen either of her fathers. She was ashamed to say that she felt like a scared child, desperate for her parents’ protection. “What’s going to happen? Where are we going?”

“We’re taking a page out of your father’s book.” He stopped when the alleyway opened onto a street, checking for Daleks before running across, Selene quick on his heels. “We’re _running_. Preferably to somewhere _very_ far away in both space and time.” They ducked into a doorway, shrinking to the ground and covering their heads when something exploded nearby. Gold sparks erupted into the sky, stinging her eyes. "Where are your children? Your wife?" He knew the whole Oakdown house had retreated into the city as the war worsened, but . . .

Selene shook her head. "They're all gone, dad. It's just me."

The Master drew in a breath, closing his eyes. That hurt. He hadn’t expected it, but it did, deep in his hearts. He shook his head. “We’ll mourn later. For now, we have to find the Doctor.” The thought of saving his husband after so much time fighting left a bitter taste in his mouth, but now wasn't the time to think of the past. Arcadia was burning, Gallifrey had fallen. He would find the Doctor and drag them into the Tardis unconscious if he had to—

They were halfway to his Tardis when they heard it. " _EX-TERM-IN-ATE!_ "

His hearts dropped. " _Run._ " His boots pounded on the ground. "Selene, _RUN!_ "

It wasn't enough.

The Dalek’s blasts reached him, only to be met with the absorbing armor. But Selene—

The shot came when they were only a few meters away. Selene's scream cut-off halfway through. She fell to the ground and didn't move.

"No," he whispered, staring in shock. Then, louder, " _NO!_ " He fell to his daughter's side, rolling her over. Dark blue eyes stared up at him, still and dull and lifeless. Her cheek had been cut when she fell.

“No, no, no, _NO!_ Selene, darling, just come on, get up . . .” This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to get on the Tardis and escape, they would have run somewhere and he would have found the Doctor, they were going to be a family again . . .

He didn’t quite know how he got to the Tardis. He couldn’t remember putting in the coordinates. The doors opened into a house on Mount Perdition. They’d never properly lived there. Theta hadn’t liked it, found the black-and-silver decor of House Oakdown too dour and depressing. The Tardis had been their home, the Tardis and the stars and the universe. But Selene had lived there after her fathers became renegades, the Chancellor had made a gift of it to her. His grandchildren were loomed and raised there, had run through the halls during Academy breaks and vacations. 

He left her in that house, laying stiff on top of her bed. His plain black cloak became a funeral shroud. He stared at her for a long time before forcing himself to speak. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

He stayed longer than he meant to before dragging himself to the Tardis. Without thinking, he took out a Chameleon Arch.

He was muttering, the drums in his head loud enough that he didn’t even realize he was speaking. “Take it away. This war, this body, this mind, these memories. _TAKE THEM AWAY!_ "

* * *

_2 Months_

The Doctor slept for two hours and woke up in a bad mood, made worse when she ran to the bathroom to vomit for what felt like an eternity but was probably closer to ten minutes. She groaned painfully when she remembered that they were supposed to make a trip to 38th century Ikea to pick out some baby furniture, but she didn't even want to do that. What she wanted was to lie in bed and stare at the constellations on her ceiling until she fell asleep. And maybe eat some grapes.

Her stomach lurched. _No grapes._

She lay motionless for more than an hour before accepting that she wasn't going to get any sleep. Her hand rested on her stomach. She strained to make out the four-beat rhythm growing there. _You did this to me._

The child chose not to respond. _Already spiteful. Just like your father._

She waited a little while longer before getting up. This turned out to be a mistake as the Master was the only one in the console room. The humans must have still been sleeping, leaving her without a desperately needed buffer. 

He started to say something before looking at her and apparently deciding it wasn’t worth it. “Feeling up for a trip today?”

The Doctor almost agreed without thinking when a wave of nausea hit her. She swayed on her feet before gripping the console with one hand. “No. If I even try to walk off the Tardis now, I'll throw my stomach up on the ground."

"Now _that's_ an image." He walked around until he was standing next to her, raising a hand. The Doctor flinched before the backs of his fingers gently slid along her cheek. "What's wrong?"

She slapped his hand away. "No, don't touch me, I don't . . ." She trailed off, still dizzy. She didn't want to feel him. Last night she'd not even thought twice about letting him into her bed because she was lonely and tired and she missed him. And she was still tired and lonely, but now with the knowledge that she'd given into her base impulses, that he'd only wanted her because she was at her worst. Because she'd killed, and been cruel, and she was a monster, and he liked her that way.

The Master was staring at her now, anger clear on his face and in his eyes. “Don’t tell me this is because we had sex last night.”

“It’s not,” she bit out, staring straight ahead so she didn’t have to look at him. 

“Well, good. Because that would be pathetic.” He was closer than he’d been a moment ago. How hadn’t she noticed him? “Especially since you seemed plenty happy last night.” Behind her, she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his hand on the top of her stomach, just below her breasts. “I know I was.”

She gripped his hand. "Step away now before I vomit on you."

It was a testament to his resolve that it took him a moment to step back.

She rolled her eyes a moment later when she realized her threat wouldn’t be enough to keep him from monologuing. "Oh, _Doctor_. Always acting like you're above the rest of the universe while thinking yourself so low. Can't make a choice without moaning about it two seconds later—”

He was interrupted by the sound of something knocking on the Tardis door. Which would have been a relief (she didn’t think she could take another monologue from the Master without throwing him back in the vault) if they hadn’t been drifting in the time vortex.

* * *

Graham rested his head on one hand, eyes half-open as he tried to pay attention. “So . . . you’ve got mail?”

The Master stopped his focused pacing to turn on Graham with a look of manic rage. “What we have, _sock-thief_ , is a psychic container used by Time Lords to send distress messages. It is far more complex than anything you can conceive of—”

Ryan picked up the white cube, tossing it in his hands. "Who's it from, then?"

The Doctor snatched the hypercube from him. "It's not a _toy_ , Ryan!" she snapped, clearly upset. Turning the cube over, she showed them the pattern of Gallifreyan moon phases printed on one side. "See this? It’s a symbol Selene uses. Her name is Archaic Gallifreyan for 'silver moon'. She took that and kind of ran with it."

"Selene?" Yaz repeated, sitting forward. "Your daughter?"

The Master looked at his wife sharply. "You told them about Selene?"

"Not _much_." She held the tips of her fingers to the hypercube, pressing her mind to the psychic energy inside. 

The cube glowed before a voice sounded from it. “Hello?” The Doctor closed her eyes, hearing her daughter’s voice for the first time in centuries. “This is the Time Lady Selene, I’m sending my coordinates to the Doctor or the Master, whichever it gets to first. I’m trapped in a rouge Leviathan on the planet Rigellus in the Kasterborous system. I'm badly injured and separated from the TARDIS I was using. I . . ." Her voice trembled. "Please come quickly."

* * *

“Right,” the Doctor said, standing before the Master and her companions. “Leviathans are time-lord tech, used in war for battle and transporting large numbers of soldiers, weapons, and information. They can move through time, but not as well as a TARDIS. And they’re somewhat sentient. Kind of look like giant flying whales. _Really_ look like giant flying whales, actually.”

“What’s your daughter doing inside a giant whale?” Ryan asked, voicing what all the humans were thinking.

“I don’t _know!_ ” she half-yelled, hands shaking from how upset she was. “I’ll ask when I see her!”

“But _because_ they’re sentient,” the Master said, seeing the Doctor wasn’t likely to continue her explanation, “sometimes they went rouge and abandoned Gallifrey, especially in the final days of the Time War.”

“Time War?” Yaz and Graham asked at the same time.

“Long story. But since they're alive, if it knows there are Time Lords rummaging around it, the Leviathan will panic and try to expel us."

"Exactly," the Doctor said, regaining her composure. "We have to be quiet, discreet, not alert it to our presence. These things are _huge_ , as much as hundreds of miles just in one, so we'll go in two groups to cover as much ground as possible. Graham and Ryan with me, and Yaz with the Master."

"Why do I have to go with him?" Yaz asked, looking wide-eyed between the Time Lords.

"You annoy him least. There should be seven levels. I’ll land us on the fourth and we’ll split it.”

The Master looked at her. “I’m going down, I suppose.”

“Don’t start.” She ran around the console, powering through the pervasive dizziness that followed her as she put in the coordinates Selene had sent. She jumped when the Master appeared behind her, his hand covering hers.

“Doctor, are you well enough to do this now?”

She started to nod, but that was a mistake, making her vision blur. Regardless, she said, “Doesn’t matter. It’s Selene.”

* * *

“What happened here?”

The Master rolled his eyes at the inane question, moving farther down the corridor. Only a third of the lights were working, enough to see by, but also enough to make it all incredibly creepy. Circular Gallifreyan decorated the walls, revealing maps, coordinates, important names, instructions. This was one of the smaller ones; each level was around fifteen kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. A single floor could have easily taken days if they stopped to search each room, but he’d opened his senses, searching for any other Time Lord minds. He’d know if they got close.

“Last Great Time War. Gallifrey versus Daleks. Didn’t really end well for anyone.”

“Daleks?”

“That’s what I said, yes. Why, you meet them?”

“Once.”

“Hm. They show up about once a year or so.” He looked back at her. “When you saw it, did the Doctor get emotional? Angry, violent?”

“Kind of. Why?”

“Did you get any video?”

* * *

The Doctor was swaying side to side, barely moving as she trudged forward. It was like she could feel every tiny shift of the great body she was in, every move of the head and tail as it flew through the sky, blissfully unaware of her inside it. Ryan and Graham were on either side of her, not-so-subtly pushing her back into place every time she felt like sinking to the floor. She was probably going to have to stop to vomit soon. She was certain she’d gotten it all out that morning, but apparently it didn’t work that way.

“When’s the last time you saw your daughter, Doc?”

It was a blatant attempt to take her mind off of things, and she was thankful for it. Avoidance was more her style. “Oh, not in . . . what, two thousand years maybe? More if you count that time I was trapped in a confession dial, but I only really remember a day of that. Didn’t exactly part on the best of terms." She'd always meant to talk to Selene again, try to make things right. But then Susan ( _Arkytior, Dad, she's Gallifreyan and she has a Gallifreyan name_ ) had stayed on Earth, and the Doctor was banned from home, and there were arrests and trials and wars, and it all just got away from them.

Ryan stared at her for a moment before looking away. His hand on her arm seemed less reassuring. “Didn’t think you were the sort to do something like that.”

The Doctor winced. She knew about Ryan’s issues with his own father, and hated what he must be thinking of her.. “Gallifrey . . . things are different there. Time Lord parents aren't exactly known for their affection. You're basically just supposed to keep them alive for eight years then send them to the Academy. Hardly ever see them after that. Unless you're like the Master and me, but we were always the odd ones out.” In the days after he’d left Gallifrey, the Doctor often told himself that he’d tried. They raised Selene and Helio on their Tardis for the first eight years of their lives, took Selene on trips around the universe even after she went to the Academy. They weren’t perfect, but they tried to be better.

“What about your parents?”

She scrunched her nose. “Let’s not go there.” Arranging her marriage to Koschei was one of the only truly kind things her parents did for her, and even that had had selfish motivations. Afterward, they’d only spoken a handful of times before the Doctor left Gallifrey.

“What about the Master's family like?” Graham asked curiously. “I’d kill to see whatever made _that_.”

The Doctor shrugged, not quite catching the remark, tired as she was. “Mostly okay. They disowned him, but that’s fair, he did kill a _lot_ of people. His dad was the _worst_ though, the Chancellor. That man looked me in the eyes and said I was degenerate, low-born trash and that he would never have let me marry a member of his family if he could think of anyone else who would take him. It was our wedding day.”

* * *

Yaz panted, leaning against the wall. “Can we take a break? I feel like my feet are gonna fall off.” She had no idea how long they’d been searching, but they’d made it through two levels without stopping.

The Master half-growled at her, grabbing her arm and tugging her forward. “ _No._ We’ll stop once we find Selene and not a moment sooner. If you couldn’t keep up, you shouldn’t travel with the Doctor.”

“You already think no one should travel with the Doctor!” she snapped back, shaking out of his grip. They trudged along in mutually irritated silence, the Master always a step ahead, occasionally turning back to glare at her. She watched him, curious despite herself. He was worried, she could see it in his face, his dark eyes deadly serious rather than just deadly. It was almost like . . . “You really care about her, don’t you? Your daughter?”

The Master stopped, bristling. “I have a biological imperative to pass down my genes and see to it they survive. That’s just instinct.”

“I don’t think it is.”

The Master opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a panicked look overcame his face. He was completely still, his eyes distant, as though he were listening to something far-off. “Selene.” He took off running down the hall, leaving Yaz to awkwardly jog after him. By the time she caught up, he was ripping open a door, the laser screwdriver loose in his hand as he went in.

They looked around. In a glance, the Master could see the Seal of Rassilon emblazoned all over the walls. Furniture lay broken on the ground. Bits of glass and synthetics marked what had been screens and computers, likely destroyed on purpose once the Time Lords realized they had to leave.

The room was dark, its air stale and dry. He looked around, loosing tendrils from his mind to seek her out. "Selene?"

For a moment, the room was silent. Then . . . “Dad?" 

The Master turned over a broken table, finding Selene underneath. She was lying flat on her back, her head turned to stare at the wall. Her arms and hands were splayed on the floor. When she spoke, her voice was low and pained. "I didn't know if you'd come."

"I'm here, Selene," the Master said quietly, his voice soft and kind. "The Doctor is here, too. We came to find you."

"Oh." Tears fell down her cheeks. “It might be an awkward time to say this, but I can't move."

“What?” Yaz went to her knees beside the woman. She didn’t look much at all like either the Doctor or the Master — sickly pale skin, brown hair done up in an elaborate braid, her blue clothes dark and plain rather than the unique outfits her parents went for — but the most striking thing was the way her body was twisted at the waist.

“It’s my spine, I think. I was messing with the circuits in here, looking for information from when Rassilon was here, but then something happened? The room moved and something hit my back.”

The Master looked around, seeing the destroyed furniture and tech and exposed wiring. A Leviathan’s body was huge and flexible, and a well-timed thrash was capable of taking out a hundred Daleks at once. But if its systems weren’t maintained, the stabilizers not functioning properly, a single sudden move would send everything inside flying.

“You can’t move at all?” Yaz asked as the Master took out his screwdriver, scanning his daughter.

“No. Who are you?”

“She’s one of the Doctor’s humans,” the Master said absently, checking his readings. “Your legs and lower back are crushed. You’re not going to be able to move.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

The Master smiled for a moment before his expression turned serious. “You can’t walk, but it’s not life-endangering enough to make you regenerate on its own. I can probably carry you to the Tardis, but I can’t guarantee we’ll get there before the Leviathan moves again.”

“I’ve been watching this one for a while. It’s mostly calm, but about twice a day it turns suddenly and starts going North. It caught me off guard, but it will probably happen again soon. We need to move quickly. I should regenerate." She tries to move her head, but only ends up flitting her eyes. "Will you do it, dad?"

Fighting against his own instincts _screaming_ at him to be selfish, the Master nods. "I'll make it quick. Which one is this?"

"Just the third. Not everyone goes through them like you two."

The Master rolled his eyes. "Got that right."

Yaz frowned, growing increasingly confused about whatever the hell the two Time Lords were talking about. "Is anyone gonna clue me in—"

The Master leaned over his daughter's body, grabbed her by the neck, and twisted it to the side, snapping the fragile bones in one fluid motion.

Yaz jumped back, landing with her hands behind her as she stared in horrified shock. "Oh my . . . how _could you—_ "

Then Selene's body erupted into rainbow-filled light, and it didn't seem like the moment to say anything.

* * *

_Contact._

The Doctor paused, leaning against the wall and breathing hard as she considered whether or not to let the Master back in her head. _. . . Contact._

 _I have Selene now. We’re going up to the Tardis._ A beat passed before he added, _You might want to hurry._

Despite that extremely ominous statement, the Doctor sighed in relief, resting her hands on her waist. "Whoo! They found her! We made good progress though, right?"

Graham and Ryan stared at her. "Doc, we haven't even left the floor."

She chose to ignore that.

They were marginally faster getting back to the Tardis, though her head and stomach were both in pain by then. She was ready to pass out, bed or no, when Yaz and the Master showed up with a confused woman in between them.

Although she'd regenerated, the Doctor recognized her daughter immediately. Her hair was golden-red and past her shoulders, curlier than it had ever been. Bronze skin contrasted big blue eyes. She had freckles. 

Selene stared at the Doctor, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. "Who are you people? Where am I?"

The Doctor didn't even have time to feel stricken before the Master sighed. "I told you ten times now. I'm the Master, your father. _This_ is the Doctor. You have literally known us since you were born." He glanced at the Doctor. "She had to regenerate, she's confused."

"Oh." That would go away at least. "No coma, at least. Would've been hard to carry her all the way."

"Worse than catching her every time she tried to run off?" Yaz asked, glaring at the freshly-minted Time Lady.

"Oh, she definitely gave us some trouble," the Master said proudly, turning to show the Doctor a still-forming bruise on his cheek. "Gave me this when I tried to get her in a teleport. She has a strong right hook."

Selene was staring at the Tardis, running a hand over the door. "Why does this feel familiar?"

"It's a TARDIS, Selene," the Doctor said gently, speaking to her for the first time in years.

"Time And Relative Dimensions In Space," Selene whispered, eyes closed. 

A beat passed before she turned on her heel, trying to sprint down the hall before the Master grabbed her, wrapping an arm around her waist and digging his feet in. "No you don't!" Selene strained against his hold, screaming to be let go. "Fuck— someone open the damn door!"

The Doctor moved first, opening the Tardis door behind him and moving aside. Yaz, Graham, and Ryan helped the Master get Selene inside when she put her hands and feet on the doorframe and tried to push herself back out. 

" _Let me go! I'll—_ oh, it's bigger on the inside." For some reason, this seemed to calm her down. She let the door be closed behind her, looking up at the dark blue and gold console room. "This feels . . . new. But familiar. Does that make sense?"

The Doctor watched her, hearts swelling with a mixture of love and grief and happiness and nostalgia. Memories came to her unbidden, of a baby girl with soft black hair laying underneath a starry mobile, of the Master showing their daughter around the console on her eight birthday and explaining in a gentle tone what everything did. "It makes perfect sense."

Selene was still for a moment, looking at the broken Chameleon Arch. Then she took off down the hallway before anyone could stop her. 

The Master cursed under his breath, running after her. "Not again!"

* * *

The Master straightened his coat as he came to stand next to the Doctor in the observation room, looking at Selene through the glass. "Finally got her to accept I wasn't trying to kill her with the syringe." Selene was floating in the middle of the zero-g room, ginger hair a halo around her head. "She should be alright in three days."

The Doctor rested her hands on the glass, closing her eyes in exhaustion. "Thanks." Normally she'd have done it herself, but at this rate she'd probably have ended up stabbing herself in the arm. And the Master wouldn't let anyone else near Selene.

"How are you doing?" the Master asked, and his voice was surprising in its softness. "You look dead."

The Doctor rolled her eyes. "Such a charmer." There was no bite, not from either of them. It felt _right_ , like this, the three of them together on a Tardis again. It felt . . .

 _Like we're a family._ She smiled despite herself, though she winced a moment later when her stomach rolled. The Master immediately noticed, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek. "Doctor?"

She swayed, turning so she could hold him by his coat lapels. "I've been tired since I woke up."

He cupped her head, tilting her face up. His eyes were concerned when he pressed their foreheads together. _Contact._

This time, she didn't let herself think. _Contact._

It wasn't like before. Then they'd just talked really, neither trusting the other enough for it to be anything more. Now she let her barriers down and felt her entire body relax when he did the same. She could feel him and everything he was. There was rage there, and pain and darkness and madness, but for the moment it was buried under the surface, a shadow to be confronted later. In its place she found a quiet kind of happiness, his love for Selene and for her, hope marked by fear and sadness.

_Why are you sad?_

The Master shook his head. _Because it's not going to last._

She stared at him. He had such big eyes this time around. Couldn't hide anything from her, even when he wanted to. Neither of them could.

He stepped back before she could press the issue, taking her by the arm. "You're exhausted. And pregnant. And you've vomited up half the Tardis. Let's get you to bed before you pass out."

"Not an invalid," the Doctor muttered, but she followed anyway because she _was_ tired and if they kept talking, they would have to confront their feelings, and no one wanted that.

The Doctor flipped onto her bed, snuggling her pillow without bothering to change her clothes. She half-opened an eye when she felt the Master tug at her boot, pulling them off and setting them by the bed. They watched each other for a moment before he stood up to go.

"Stay," the Doctor whispered, stopping him in his tracks. "Stay here. Stay with me."

The Master smiled sadly before shaking his head. "You're out of it. You don't know what you're asking."

"I do," she insisted, feeling herself start to drift off. "I want you to stay."

"No, you don't. Not really." The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was the sound of the door closing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was going to be longer, but this seemed like a natural point to end it. So we'll see more of Selene in the next chapter, and probably get to Fugitive of the Judoon (ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boi) after that


	7. Wouldn't It Be Nice

_2 Months_

“I think I want a cape this time around,” Selene said, looking through the Tardis’s insanely huge closet. “But like, one of those capes that only goes over one shoulder? Does that have a name? Oh, I could have a brooch!”

"You _should_ have one," the Master said, passing her a long blue-and-black coat to try on.

"I should!" She tried on the coat, twirling in front of the mirror before glancing at the Doctor. "You okay, mom?"

The Doctor wasn't feeling okay. She'd had to go up a shoe size because her feet were swelling, and the smell of breakfast from that morning was turning her stomach. But she couldn't exactly say that because they hadn't told Selene she was pregnant. Or _talked_ about telling Selene. She'd like to say it was because they didn't have any time, but honestly she'd just been incredibly lazy over the past three days. 

The fact remained that though Selene had been raised by two renegade Time Lords, in many ways she was more traditional than the two of them combined. Better to wait.

It occurred to the Doctor that both the Master and Selene had been staring at her for a while now and she should probably answer. "Just jealous. I've wanted to be ginger all my lives, and you get it on the fourth body."

The Master rolled his eyes. "Truly, there is no justice in the universe." There was a playful glint in his eyes; he'd been in a good mood ever since Selene was brought onboard. The Doctor wasn't naive enough to think it would last. _Hope_ , maybe, but not think.

Selene shook her head with delight, making the orange-red coils bounce. "I _know!_ "

Despite herself, the Doctor winced, remembering the manic way the Master said the same phrase, three times over now. There was a similar light in Selene's eyes, but it was more genuine. She didn't have her father's madness, or his rage. Or the Doctor's for that matter.

"We should go to Vellence," the Master said, pulling her out of her thoughts. "We can have an outfit custom-made there, cape and all."

"You're spoiling her now," the Doctor said, slipping back into the smile that had become common to this body, the one that was somewhere between real and fake.

The Master scoffed. "Please. All my children are worthy of being spoiled."

Selene stilled for a moment. The Master and Doctor realized at the same time who she was remembering.

She shook it off in a moment, but when she spoke again, the light was gone from her. "I can't go to Vellence, dad."

"I wasn't planning to _stay_ there. Have you _smelled_ that place? Please. I was thinking we could place an order and pop in a few weeks later—"

"I mean that I'm not going anywhere with you," she said, firm, deadly serious in a way the Doctor had never seen her. " _Either_ of you. I have a mission that I need to see through."

The Doctor stared at her. "A _mission?_ " That didn't make sense. Selene wasn't a traveller, or even a soldier. She hadn't fought in the Time War, and when she finished school, she took a steady Council job through her Oakdown connections and married someone the Chancellor had picked out for her. She was many things — intelligent, loving, loyal — but _adventurous_ had rarely been one of them.

"Unfortunate," Selene drawled sarcastically, "but necessary." She turned, facing the mirror with her back to them. "I took a trip to see the Matrix about a year back. Have you ever been?"

"Yes," the Doctor and Master said at the same time, glancing at each other before looking away.

"I used to go a lot. There's so much to learn, so much knowledge that's as good as forgotten if we leave it to the dead. But the last time I was there I found something buried deep. A whisper of a myth, but it was enough. The Timeless Child."

The Doctor and the Master clutched their heads at the same time as images flashed through them. Children, more than a dozen, each completely different than the last, but leading back to one. A boy dressed in red-and-black with golden hair like the sun and eyes the color of Earth's sky.

As fast as it came, the image is gone, leaving the shadow of a memory and a familiar, painful name on the tip of her tongue. She started to speak, to name the child, but in the next moment even that has disappeared. Only a vague sense of _hurt_ remained, rolling through her mind and body.

_Gold like the sun . . ._

* * *

Yaz stopped in the kitchen doorway, ignoring Ryan's help when he walked into her back. Selene stood in the middle, attempting to balance the food in her arms as she placed it amongst the already laden table. A starfruit was precariously held in her teeth. 

She said something when she noticed them, the sound muffled by the fruit. She opened her mouth wide, letting it fall to the table and cleared her throat before speaking again. "Biscuit?" She looks around her hoard for a moment before holding up a box of custard creams. "Found a huge stash of these. Don't know if I like them yet."

Yaz looked back at Graham and Ryan, both of whom mouthed 'I don't know' to her. Graham took the box of biscuits. She sighed in exasperation before walking forward. "Are you planning to eat all of this?"

"Probably not. Just tasting. I _am_ hungry, though." Selene picked an item at random — a hunk of what looked like properly _blue_ cheese — and took a large bite. Her face twisted in disgust as she spit it right back out. "Oh, that _sucks!_ I loved this so much before! This is the worst week."

Wary, the three humans sat down, hopefully beyond Selene's spitting range. "About that," Yaz began.

Selene held up the starfruit and sighed wistfully. "At least you haven't betrayed me." She started eating it through the middle, which Yaz was fairly certain was not the normal way of doing it.

"What's that thing you did the other day? On the whale-thing?"

Selene looked at the two halves of the starfruit that had come apart in her hands, not quite seeing how they'd ended up that way. "That day was kind of a blur. More specific?"

All of them stared at her. "Yaz said you changed your face," Ryan said bluntly. "What's that about?"

"Ryan," Yaz whispered harshly.

"No," Graham said, "he's right. That's weird."

Selene stopped her inspection of a ham to look at them. "What, mom didn't tell you about that?"

They shifted awkwardly. "Well, she kind of mentioned it in passing," Graham said. "That she used to be a man. But I consider myself very progressive, so I didn't want to push."

Selene rolled her eyes. "Honestly. Love mom, but she's not always the most responsible person. I mean, what does she think will happen, she can just completely change her body and personality without warning you guys ahead of time and you'll just roll with it?" She shook her head while spreading something very purple on a bagel, tasting it and immediately gagging. "Sorry, new tongue."

The humans were still staring, now a mix between confused, horrified, and 'oh that makes sense'. Yaz was more stricken than the others. She remembered seeing Selene's prone body, the way her spine had been broken and twisted. The night they got back, she'd dreamed of it, of the Master's hands on his daughter's neck, the blinding white light that followed, the _screams_. The noise seemed to drag on into eternity, high-pitched and begging for release. Then, nothing. But the girl she'd been looking at was gone, and something different lay where she'd been. She couldn't imagine watching that happen to the Doctor.

"And you guys just . . . " Ryan shrugged. " _Do that?_ "

"I mean . . . if the other option is _dying_ , yeah. What are you gonna do, right?" She closed her mouth around a spoon of something chocolate-flavored, making a happy noise. "Oh, this slaps."

"What are you going to do now?" Ryan asked, wondering if there was some kind of butterfly-like chrysalis stage or molt that Time Lords had to undergo. It would not be the weirdest thing the Doctor didn't tell them. 

Selene shrugged, luckily not having any idea what Ryan was imagining. "Rigellus was a bust. I'll keep looking, maybe check in every now and then."

"What about your family?" Yaz was certain the Doctor had mentioned at some point that Selene had children, and maybe a husband? Wife? Mate? Civil partner? All of the above?

Selene frowned. "Oh yeah. I should probably message Aurelia and tell her I regenerated." She returned to testing her taste buds, completely missing how the companions were waiting for her to continue.

"And Aurelia is?" Graham asked around his custard cream.

The Time Lady shrugged. "Just my wife."

Graham choked. 

“It actually might be funny if I don’t tell her. Just show up with a different face and see if she notices. Probably not.”

“Why didn’t you call her?” Ryan asked, looking up from the alien cheese he’d been contemplating eating. “When you were stuck, why call your parents when you hadn’t seen them for so long? Especially since the Master is . . . well . . .”

“A genocidal mass murderer who only cares about three or four people on a good day, and one of those is himself?”

“. . . I didn’t want to say it, but, yeah.”

Selene shrugged, unconcerned. “She probably wouldn’t care.”

“How could she _not care?_ ” Yaz asked, appalled.

Selene seemed much more concerned with the yellow, grape-like berry she was edging towards her mouth. “I mean, I don’t think she would. We’re not super close.” Finally noticing the way the humans were looking at her, she explained, “Well, we’re not like my parents. My marriage to Aurelia was arranged. We hardly ever see each other. I only met her once before our wedding day, for Omega’s sake.”

“No way,” Graham said. “I don’t believe the Doctor would do that to one of her kids."

“Oh, he _hated it_ ,” Selene said, smiling wistfully. “But it’s pretty normal on Gallifrey. And I wanted it. So he gave in.”

“Want it? How could—”

“Well, why not? When I was a kid, it was different. Thought I’d fall in love with someone just like me and travel the universe with them.” Her smile was gone. “When I grew up . . . I’ve never been in love, and I never want to be.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” Yaz said, immediately understanding. “Your parents. They’re not . . . not _really . . ._ ”

“Oh, Yaz.” Selene had very bright eyes. The color was different, but they were similar to the Master’s. “I’ve never seen two people more in love with each other than my parents, then and now. And look what it’s done to them.”

* * *

Selene left the next day. The Master was fussing, though he would loudly deny it later. “We’ll drop you off at your TARDIS. You have the phone the Doctor gave you? A vortex manipulator, bouncers?”

Selene rolled her eyes, removing her father’s hand from her cape. “ _Yes_ , dad, I’m not _sixty_." 

The Doctor pulled her coat closer around herself, staring. She didn’t want Selene to leave, but she couldn’t force her to stay. It didn’t help that she still hadn’t told Selene. It just seemed so much easier to ignore the problem until it blew up in her face.

“You two aren’t going to be at each other’s necks the second I leave, are you?” Selene looked between the Doctor and the Master with an expression of mild exasperation, like her parents would argued over sports teams instead of fundamental differences of morality or that time the Doctor stole his sandwich.

The Master smirked (his default expression). “Let’s just say we have a common goal at the moment.”

Selene rolled his eyes. “Oh, you two are having one of those moments where you work together until one of you — _dad_ — betrays the other and there are emotions?” They looked away. “Yeah, count me out of that.”

The Doctor chuckled before holding her arms out, bringing Selene in for a hug. “Don’t hesitate to reach out, alright? First sign of trouble, hear something weird in the middle of the night, oh that never ends well. And don’t go to Rivel V, they _really_ don’t like me there!”

“Please, if I have to avoid every planet where they don’t like you, I won’t even be able to go home.”

“Wow. Okay, bit hurtful, but I’ll let it slide.” She hugged her again because she didn’t know when she’d get another chance. “Just stay safe, alright? Couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”

 _Now would be a good time,_ the Doctor thought. For a moment, she let herself imagine a world where Selene stayed, and Missy had never left, and her baby was born safe and healthy and nothing bad ever happened.

Then she let Selene leave without another word. Running was easier.

* * *

The Doctor knocked, growing agitated as the door remained closed, pounding harder and harder—

The Master wrenched the door open, staring at her. “I was brushing my teeth! What are you even—”

She brushed past him into the room, standing by his bed. The room was dark, painted and decorated in shades of black, purple, and red. On the nightstand, she could see a book of names in Circular Gallifreyan, some of them highlighted, crossed out, or circled. Pages had been torn out and crumpled on the floor.

The Master rolled his eyes before closing the door. “What do you want—”

“The thing is, I shouldn’t want it!” She was gesticulating wildly, barely looking at him as she walked back and forth and ranted. “I shouldn’t want you, and I shouldn’t want us to be a family again, and I shouldn’t want to just forget everything that’s happened! I shouldn’t even want to pretend! Because you've killed so many people, and _hurt_ so many people, and you hurt me! We're a thousand years from things being okay, and it’s hard, and we might never get there, and can we just not think about it tonight? Can we ignore it? Can you just hold me?”

The Master stared at her. She stood there waiting for him to reject her, to laugh and throw everything she said back in his face. She’d known it was coming from the moment she decided to come down here, and now—

“Yes.”

Oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Master: This is my daughter, Selene. She is sane and not evil, but I love her anyway.
> 
> So this was just kind of a fluff but also emotion and foreshadowing chapter before we get into 'Fugitive of the Judoon' and plotty stuff. I'm definitely going to do 'Praxeus', and maybe 'Can you hear me?', but not sure yet. Then we're gonna have PLOT stuff, and I'm already scared.


	8. OK, This Is Where Canon REALLY Starts To Go Off The Rails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fugitive of the Judoon, but make it thoschei and not canon-aligned

_2 Months_

"Your bed is nice," the Doctor muttered. She was curled up with the Master's arm around her, cheek pressed to his chest, listening to the steady double thrumming of his hearts.

"I think your Tardis is getting used to me again. Finally stopped feeling like I was sleeping on a slab of stone."

The Doctor chuckled, nuzzling closer. " _This_ is nice. Every day should be like this." She wondered if it could always be like this, if they could pretend there had never been anything but them, always together and never parted. Maybe it could be like with Missy. Maybe better. She might not be able to make the Master good, but maybe she could make him less bad, and maybe that would be enough. 

"It should." He paused, checking the time. "Although if we don't get up soon, we'll spend the _entire_ day in here."

"Good." Their barriers were down, minds mixing with and dancing around each other. For once, he didn't feel angry, or even sad. Just . . . peaceful.

"Have you been thinking of names?" 

"Feel like we had a good theme going with the first two. Moon, sun. I think something meaning star would be nice." She'd always loved stars. Full of light and possibility and _hope_.

"Someone's feeling sentimental."

She smiled up at him. "Always." Through their bond, humming with life and subdued affection, she felt him smile.

Then the alarms started to go off.

* * *

“ _Kro Kro Tro Kro So Fro So So To. Zo Zo Zo Tro Kro_.”

“A Judoon warning signal,” the Doctor said, pulling on her coat as she ran into the console room with the Master on her heels. Ryan, Yaz, and Graham were already there, clearly confused at the blaring red lights and siren sounds. 

“Judoon?” Graham asked. “Are you just making up words to keep us from asking questions?”

“She does that, but not now,” the Master responded, looking over the Doctor’s shoulder as she pulled up the transmission. “Judoon are intergalactic police for hire. Dangerous, occasionally useful, rarely any fun.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor said. “They’ve sent out a notice of a zonal enforcement field on Earth. No one can get in or out. Oh, the cheek!”

“They're about to beam down in Gloucester,” the Master said before shrugging. “Oh well, not our problem—”

The Doctor grabbed the Master by the sleeve and pulled him back to keep him from walking off. “Don’t start! There’s a platoon of Judoon near the moon. They’ve got no jurisdiction there, they can’t do that. Now, if I can match the Tardis's rotation to the frequency of the enforcement field's refresh rate, I _might_ just be able to slip us in before anyone gets killed, and _you’re_ going with, whether you want to or not!”

“Not.”

“Exactly!”

* * *

The Tardis materialized next to a coffee shop, which the Doctor insisted on going into so they could warn the locals about what was happening. The Master half-listened while contemplating whether it was worth the effort to steal a bag of coffee beans—

When he was suddenly gone, teleported out of the shop along with Graham.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Ryan were already out of the shop by then, either not noticing the sudden silence or enjoying it too much to ask any questions. The Doctor used her sonic to find the nearest gathering of Judoon, just in time to hear one say, “ _Fugitive house unit located. Prepare isolator._ ”

“I hope you've got a permit for that,” the Doctor snarked, standing before the head Judoon and holding out her psychic paper, hoping it would come up with something suitably impressive.

“You're an Imperial Regulator?” the Judoon demanded.

 _Excellent._ “Yes. And there's _plenty_ here to regulate. For starters, you don't have jurisdiction here! So why you're using a Class _Seven_ Enforcement Field around this city bothers me a lot. More importantly—” she pointed at a weapon that was aimed at the brick building the Judoon had been preparing to storm, “this temporal isolator is an outlawed piece of kit. Radiation leakage and civilian casualties!” Quickly turning to her companions, she explained, “Designed to freeze time but causes _horrific_ collateral damage to anything and anyone that gets in its path. Horrible thing.”

“Well you're not using that thing here, pal,” Ryan said with what he hoped was a very intimidating point. “So consider your rhino backside _imperially regulated_.”

“Fugitive is highly dangerous,” the Judoon insisted, growing angry. “Precautions must be taken.”

“ _Not_ that weapon, _not_ here,” the Doctor insisted, refusing to back down. “Humans will die, and _you_ , Captain, will have racked up enough violations to ensure that your troop never get hired again.” She smiled when the troop leader made a low sound she recognized as a mutter. “Look at you and your platoon of Judoon near the . . . that _lagoon_ ”

“Eh, it’s more of a canal?” Yaz offered.

“Yeah, not your best.”

“Oh, whatever! Where's your pride, Judoon? Where's your respect for the rules? I'm very disappointed in you!” _Mom voice, wasn’t expecting that._ “So we will take over from here.”

“Negative!” the Judoon growled. “Mission _must_ be fulfilled by the contracted troop. Judoon Engagement Article 163B.”

“Yeah? Well, that article is overridden by local Earth law . . . 12. Which _clearly_ states that any potential arrestee is entitled to arbitration with a third party.”

The Judoon huffed, breathing through its (frankly huge) nostrils in frustration. 

“You _will_ give us the time to go in there and arbitrate, and that weapon will not need to be used. Just give me ten Earth minutes and we can have this resolved for you.”

“ _Five_ minutes!”

“Oh, don’t be petty, nine.”

“ _Four_.”

“Nevermind, I’ll take five.” She sighed, turning back to the others. “We'd best take the lift— wait a minute.” She turned around in a circle. “Where are Graham and the Master?!”

* * *

_Contact._

The Master groaned as he returned to consciousness, immediately casting a suspicious look over his surroundings. 

_Contact, contact, contact—_

_Contact. Yes, I heard you. Thanks for checking in, by the way._ He sat up, noting the old human close to him. Pity.

_Where the hell are you?_

_A ship of some kind. Still close to Earth, same time period and everything. Teleported, not my fault. All white and angular lights, very futuristic, you should see it._

_Is Graham there?_

_Unfortunately. No one else that I can see right now, nothing’s attacked us yet._

_Good._ She seemed to be running. He could feel her anxiety seeping through. _Will you two be alright for a moment? Kind of busy down here._

_Don’t worry about us. I’ll check in when I find out what’s going on. Besides, if anything happens, I have several small bombs in my pockets._

_What—_

_Bye!_

He cut off their connection, smirking at the brief moment when he felt the Doctor’s exasperation. A second later he felt the human stir, and figured then was as good a time as any to sit up properly.

“ _Don't move_ ,” a sudden voice ordered, coming from outside the room. _“Seriously, not a muscle. Working on the movement sensors. If you even flinch, it'll set off the laser spikes. Trust me, they get everywhere_.”

“I know that voice . . .” the Master muttered, not paying attention as the human started asking questions. _Is it . . ._

“ _Neutralised. You can get excited now_.” Then Captain Jack Harkness appeared in front of them, grinning with his arms spread wide. “ _Ha!_ You missed me right!”

The Master was just about to say _no_ , when the Captain ran up to him. “Two hearts and soaking in time energy, who could it be but the good Doctor himself!”

Then Jack kissed him.

The first thing he thought was, _He's actually not a bad kisser._ Then he reached up, grabbed Jack by the neck, and crushed his windpipe in his hands.

"Oh my God," Graham said, watching in horror as Jack's body slid to the floor. "You killed him!"

The Master shrugged, sitting with his legs crossed and resting his head on his hand. "Give it a minute."

* * *

As soon as the door opened, the Doctor spoke. “Everything I’m about to say is true. There's a nasty bunch of alien police outside. They're pointing a _highly dangerous_ cannon at this flat, and they'll fire it in about four minutes now. I might be able to stop them, but I need to understand exactly why they're here, so you need to let us in, quick.”

The woman in the doorway, looking scared but far less confused than most would at that speech, widened the door for them. 

The Doctor, Ryan, and Yaz walked in, stopping when they saw a man hurriedly packing a suitcase in the living room. When he saw them, he stepped back. “Who are you? We need to leave, _now_!”

“What? Right into the arms of intergalactic mercenaries who seem to think _you—_ ” she pointed at the man, “are a fugitive from justice?”

“Well, they’ve got it wrong.” He seemed nervous, but not _scared_ , not _confused_. He knew more than he wanted them to think. 

The Doctor took a step toward him. “Sure about that? Because your bags are packed like you’re about to go on the run — not that you’ll get very far, considering the enforcement perimeter they've just put up.”

The man ran to the nearby window, checking to see if what she said was true. He ducked his head and muttered something when he realized it was. 

“Now, we’ve got about three minutes, maybe less, the Judoon were very prickly about when my five minutes started. If you’re hiding anything, I need to know.” She whipped her sonic back out, scanning both of the fugitives in turn.

“What is that thing?” Ruth asked, backing up.

“A device that tells me . . . that you're both completely human.” _Huh. Okay, then._

* * *

"What the hell are you even doing here?!"

"Me?" the Master said, ignoring the sirens blaring at a ship shot at them. "I'm a free Time Lord. I can do whatever I please. What are _you_ doing here, teleporting unsuspecting passerby onto your stolen ship to be shot at, you public menace!”

“This isn’t your ship?” Graham demanded of the captain, seeming very confused and tired and not altogether focused on the right things. 

“What, you think I'd _choose_ this look? It doesn't even have a bar!” Jack looked at the controls, messing with the shields. “Where’s the Doctor? What did you do with him?”

The Master sighed dramatically. “Well, it all started in Nazi-occupied Paris—”

Another shot shook the ship they were on, sending Graham and the Master to grapple at the walls rather than fall down. Jack quickly drew his hands over the panels, muttering under his breath. “Should not have used the old Quanticum Scoop I got from a fourple on Ibiza 13. That was a night, though. Actually, that was a _month_.”

“You won’t get an accurate read from that,” the Master pointed out irritably. “There are Judoon all over Gloucester, they set up Level Seven—”

“Enforcement Shields,” Jack finished for him, running his hands over his face. “Oh, that _sucks!_ And not in the fun way!”

“Well, clearly you two know each other,” Graham said, looking between the two insane time travelers, “but I still don’t know who you are, why you've kidnapped me, or why you're after the Doc. We were kind of in the middle of something!”

“This is Jack,” the Master explained, trying to get closer to the controls, but backing off when Jack pointed a gun at him. “He’s one of the Doctor’s former strays. You know, like you, but somehow more irritating.” He’d give Graham that, at least he wasn’t a living mistake of the universe.

Jack glared at him. “You haven’t changed.” He adjusted the ship’s shields, winning them a moment of peace. “But yeah. I go way back with the Doctor.”

“ _Way back_ ,” the Master mocked. “Please, you haven’t even known them for two thousand years.” 

“If we weren’t being attacked right now, I would _literally_ throw you off this ship!” The ship jerked wildly to the left, and he yelped while grasping at the console. “Doesn’t matter. I need to talk to the Doctor, I need to tell him that the future of the universe is at stake!”

“Oh, when isn’t it?”

“Honestly,” Graham said. “And it’s _she_ , not he.”

Slowly, Jack’s face broke into a huge grin. “Oh, I _have_ to see this!”

The Master decided to go ahead and kill him again.

* * *

After searching Ruth and Lee’s flat, all they’d found was a small decorative box— _Oh, this is not from Earth._

When she relayed this to the others, Ryan asked, “Where’s it from then?”

Before she could answer, a small red ball covered in barbs flew in from the window, landing on the table. Then words came out of it, because it was just that kind of day. “ _Isolation of fugitive housing unit in 108 seconds_.”

Now seemed like as good a time as any to do something helpful.

Lee, looking _very_ shifty, stepped forward with his hand outstretched. “Give me the box.”

The Doctor purposefully held it behind her, staring him down. “Why? What is it? What do you know?”

“Lee, what are you talking about?” Ruth asked, seeming more confused than any of them. “I’ve never seen this box before in my life, but you’re all bothered by it.” She stepped in between Lee and the others, dark eyes wife. “What’s in the box?”

Lee looked at her with sad eyes. “I . . . I've made a mistake.” He took a step towards his wife, gently cupping her cheek with one hand. You're the most important thing in my life. I can't let anyone else get hurt. I need to make sure you're safe.” He looked to the Doctor. “You’re in charge, right?”

The Doctor shrugged awkwardly. “It's a very _flat_ team structure.”

He shook his head. “You're the smartest. I can see it in your eyes.” He nodded to the back of the flat. “Use the fire exit out the back. Take Ruth. Get her out and make sure she's okay. I’ll do what I can here.”

“What do you mean you _made a mistake?_ ” Ruth demanded. “Gloucester is on lockdown, people have _died!_ ”

“I know. But I just need to talk to them—”

“They’re _space rhinos!_ You want to have a chat with them?”

“ _Forty-five seconds,_ ” the timer warned.

“They'll see us getting out of the fire escape,” the Doctor muttered. “Unless . . .”

She, Yaz, and Ryan spoke at the same time. “DIVERSION!”

“You take Ruth,” Ryan said, thinking fast. “Yaz and I’ll go out the front with Lee and distract the space feds.”

“No,” Ruth said, shaking her head. “I'm not going anywhere without Lee.”

“And I’m not leaving you two here alone,” the Doctor insisted. “I should go out—”

“Oh, that’s what we’ll do,” Yaz said sarcastically. “Send the pregnant woman out to face a platoon of Judoon on her own and just hope it goes well.”

“I’m not just a _woman_ , I’m—”

“ _I_ am a police officer, I speak their language. Besides, they don’t want Ryan or me.” Yaz squeezed the Doctor’s hand reassuringly. “Go with Ruth, we’ll buy you as much time as we can, then follow later.”

“Go to the Cathedral,” Lee said, holding his wife's hand. “Ruth knows what I mean. I’ll meet you there.”

“ _Time limit exceeded. Initiating temporal isolation_.”

The Doctor looked away from them, gritting her teeth. “We’re out of time. Go, be careful and stay safe.” _Please stay safe._

* * *

“Oh, hello,” the Master said casually when Yaz and Ryan appeared on the ship. “How are you?”

“What just happened?” Ryan asked, rudely ignoring the Master’s question as he looked around in alarm. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

“Short answers,” Graham began, “teleport, stolen ship, people shooting at us—” he pointed to the dead man lying next to the Master, “friend of the Doc’s.”

“What’s happened to him?” Yaz asked, moving to stand over Jack.

“Oh, I killed him a bit,” the Master said. “I tried not to do it again, but he is _so_ irritating.”

“Oh my God,” Yaz said, leaning over Jack and checking for a pulse. “You—”

Jack gasped dramatically as he came back to life, making the Master roll his eyes. Jack glared at him. “You _fucking—_ ”

“You know Jack, I'm actually trying to be _less_ murderous, so if you could just stand at least two meters away from me at all times from now on, that would be a great help.” Honestly, some people were just so inconsiderate.

A moment later, he felt the Doctor prodding at his mind. _Running from Judoon. Possible fugitives. All very dramatic and confusing. You?_

 _. . . Nothing._

* * *

Going to the Cathedral turned out to _not_ be the right choice. Funny how her life always worked out like that.

She’d thought the Judoon arriving would be the worst of it. Then it turned out that they killed Lee, there was no sign of the fam, Ruth was the fugitive, and she’d also somehow developed some _highly_ impressive martial arts skills that even she didn’t seem to know about. Plus she hadn’t eaten in over three hours, and it was getting _unbearable_.

 _Biological cloaking._ That had to be it. Another identity hiding inside of Ruth, hidden away with only a vague message to bring her back to herself. Never fun, that. (Poor John Smith.)

Ruth finally gave in and showed her a message Lee had sent just before the Judoon got him — _Follow the light. Break the glass._

It wasn’t clear how metaphorical that was until Ruth told her she grew up in a lighthouse.

“I wish I could tell you I adored them,” she said sadly, driving down the road when the Doctor asked about her parents. “But they chose to live in a disused lighthouse. That tells you how good they were with people. Even now they’re buried there. I haven’t been back in years. Never wanted to.”

“And now you live in the heart of the city, talking to people all day long, showing them the wonders of your home.” She wanted to keep Ruth talking, see if she could pick out inconsistencies in the other woman’s history, anything that would give any clues as to what she really was.

“I guess we all rebel against our parents,” Ruth said without looking at her (though to be fair, she was the one driving). “It's part of growing up, innit?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Never been a fan of growing up.” In her experience, growing up had just been one crushed dream after another; losing Helio, separating from the Master, losing touch with Selene, being banned from Gallifrey, everything involving the Time War—

“Stop the car,” the Doctor said suddenly, reaching for the door handle. “Quickly, stop the _car_ —”

“What’s wrong?” Ruth said, quickly pulling over.

The Doctor opened her door and lurched forward onto the grass by the road, vomiting into a ditch. “Oh, that’s disgusting,” she groaned when her stomach was under control again. “Peanut butter ice cream and pickles for breakfast do _not_ mix with motion sickness!” Might have been a good thing, her mind was going to a dark place for a moment there.

She waited a minute to make sure she was okay again before lifting herself up and getting back in the car like nothing happened. “So when did you move to Gloucester?”

The rest of the ride passed quickly. When they arrived, the first thing the Doctor noticed was the sense of something old and tired in the air, like a house where a dozen generations had lived, now suddenly empty and abandoned. The lighthouse itself was clean and well-kept on the outside, though the inside revealed a dark and grey building filled with covered furniture, dust, and something like memories. The sea was close enough that she could hear the waves, taste the salt on her lips.

“Forgot what it feels like to come back here,” Ruth said with the smallest smile. “Like nothing can touch me.”

They went off in different directions, the Doctor going upstairs with her sonic scanning away while Ruth walked through the halls, moving slowly, like she was walking through water. The Doctor went higher, trying to ignore the feeling the place gave her.

Soon she emerged into the lantern room, looking out on the green and brown and grey landscape. The sun was high in the sky, shining golden light down on her. Near Ruth’s car was her parents’ grave, marked by a tombstone . . .

 _A tombstone with nothing on it?_ She scanned it and checked her sonic. _And a grave with no bodies . . ._

She ran down as quickly as she could and found a shovel nearby. It didn’t take long for the spade to hit something. When it did, she fell to her knees, digging the rest of the way with her hands. Only a minute later, she stopped to stare, feeling blue wood under her hands.

_Police Public Call Box_

“You’re probably confused right now,” Ruth said from behind her. She’d changed her clothes, now wearing a dark blue suit with a colorful ruffled top underneath. She held a gun in her hands.

_Gallifreyan tech._

“Don’t worry, though. I’m sure you understand. After all . . .” Ruth smiled. “We’re the Doctor.”

* * *

"Look," the Master said as Jack stared at him accusingly, "I _said_ to stay at least two meters away, it's not my fault you didn't listen." He casually looked at the ship's controls, which he'd quickly latched onto once Jack was dead (again). "Also, the ship's anti-theft measures are activating and I don't think they like you." He might have had a hand in that, but at least Jack could take it. If anything, the Doctor should thank him for making sure the nanogenes _only_ attacked the immortal mistake of the universe and not the other humans. He was practically a saint.

* * *

“Not the Chameleon Circuit again?”

The Doctor— the other Doctor — _oh, I’ll just call her Ruth, it’s easier_ — said, “Unfortunate, I know.” The Tardis had redecorated again. Very old school now. 

. . . She didn’t want to _say_ she didn’t like it, but—

“I can drop you off at your Tardis, but I have to be quick,” the Ruth-Doctor explained. “If Gat is half as good as I remember, she probably already knows where we are.”

“Who’s _Gat_?”

“Ugh.” Ruth rolled her eyes. “An agent from Gallifrey. Had another run-in with them recently, can’t say I enjoyed it.” Her fingers danced over the console. “Your Tardis is in Gloucester yeah? Can’t get too close, but I can drop you off nearby and go now before we do _too_ much damage to the time streams—”

“Hold on.” She grabbed the other Doctor’s wrist, drawing her attention. “If you’re my future, then where’s . . . I mean, are they . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She still remembered what it had been like when they lost Helio. The grief, anger, disbelief, the _nightmares_. She didn’t think she could do that again. 

Thankfully, Ruth seemed to know what she meant. “They’re safe. They’re with the Master, about seventy galaxies and thirty-thousand years away from here.”

The Doctor let out a sigh of relief. “Good.” She thought about it for another moment before asking, “They?”

“. . . Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” She stared at a screen on the console before speaking. “I probably shouldn’t say anything. But something big is coming, something wonderful and horrible. But the sun will shine again. And, Doctor.” Ruth pulled a lever, and soon they were rematerializing in Gloucester. “Soon the Master will need you more than ever. He'll be close to the point of no return. When the time comes, don't turn on him. Run to him, and bring him back to us.” She opened the door. “Now go.”

* * *

“There she is!” 

The Master and her companions rounded the corner, running when they saw her.

“What happened?” Ryan asked. “Where’ve you been? What happened to Ruth? The Judoon things are gone—”

“You're never going to guess what happened to us—”

“Captain Jack Harkness said hello—”

“And the Master killed him six times and told us not to tell you!”

“ _What?!”_ The Doctor demanded, staring angrily at the Master. 

He huffed, looking at Graham with mock-offense. “I’m never telling you anything ever again. And in my defense, he’s _very_ irritating!” He held up a bag. “I also got you some more ice cream, but no one wants to talk about _that_.” When she continued glaring at him, he rolled his eyes. “He’s fine, by the way. Wanted to tell you something about a Lone Cyberman, sounded important.” He held out the bag to her. She waited a moment before finally taking it.

“What happened with Ruth, then?” Yaz asked, clearly not wanting them to just stand around and watch the Time Lords have a moment.

The Doctor frowned, shaking her head. “Not sure. I think something messed with my memory. I haven’t felt like this since . . .” Since she saved Gallifrey with the past versions of herself.

Well, that probably wasn’t good.

“What?” The Master stepped forward, immediately lifting his fingers to her temples. _Contact._

This time, she didn’t hesitate. _Contact._

* * *

“You should sleep in your room tonight,” the Doctor said, trying not to let her uncertainty show. 

The Master frowned, his hand falling from her room’s door. “Why?”

She arched a brow at him, surprised. Not at him, but at herself for forgetting his audacity. “Jack?”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Fair.” Still, he didn’t leave. “I am sorry about that.”

She scoffed. “No you’re not.”

“I am.” He frowned, as though he didn’t quite understand his own thoughts. “I am.”

She stilled before turning to face him fully. “Then why’d you do it? After the Year That Never Was, everything you did to him, you thought I wouldn’t care?”

“No, that’s not . . . it wasn’t how I thought it would be. Not _fun_ , not like it used to be.” He was waving one hand as he spoke, seemingly without notice. “Doctor, I don't know how to be good.”

She took an unbidden step toward him, carefully controlling her face. “Do you want to?”

He shook his head slightly, not quite looking at her. “I don't know. I know I want to stay here, with you. I know I want to raise our child together. But other than that . . . I don’t know anymore.”

 _Is that enough?_ She wanted it to be. More than anything, she wanted him to stay. “Okay.”

He looked at her, large eyes watery. “Okay?”

She nodded, taking his hand. “We'll start there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Master killing Jack: it's not breaking any rules if he comes back
> 
> Does the Doctor eat pickles and peanut butter ice cream together because she's having pregnant cravings or because she's the Doctor? Vote in the comments.


	9. Take Two, And . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Praxeus, but even more emotions and even less plot

_4 Months_

“Okay, Supporting Cast, we have three alerts across this ugly little blue-and-green planet to check out, and I want it done in time for dessert. Tall, dark, and human, I’ll drop you off in Peru, you see what’s going on with Birdemic Two. Old Comic Relief, a submarine went missing in the Indian Ocean, I’ll give you a sensor and you’ll see if there are any survivors and try to keep them that way if there are. Yazzles, you and I will check out the energy reading from Hong Kong because it’s been a while since I was there and I want to see what they’ve done with the place. Any questions?”

Yaz raised her hand.

“Yes, Yazzie?”

“Where the hell is the Doctor and what are you doing?”

The Master scoffed in mock-offense, dramatically flipping his new dark-blue coat. He figured if he was going to be playing Doctor all day, he might as well dress for the occasion. “ _Because_ , the Doctor kept throwing pillows at me when I tried to wake her up and the Tardis wouldn’t stop supplying them.”

At four months pregnant, the Doctor’s condition changed from day to day. On good days she was as energetic as before, but sometimes she didn’t want to eat, get out of bed, or even _talk_ , the last of which worried him most. Today was a bad day, with her curling around a pillow and groaning in pain before she worked up the energy to take some pain medicine and tell him to go. It was scary, but what little information they’d managed to scrounge up suggested it was more-or-less normal at this stage.

That didn’t make it easy to watch. 

“But don’t worry, because _I_ have got it under control,” the Master continued with a manic grin, pushing his thoughts away. “We are going to make today a good day. At most, ten thousand deaths.”

“Are you counting us in that?” Ryan asked.

“We’ll find out!” He turned to open the door. “Let's hope this goes better than last time. And if anyone sees former Prime Minister Harold Saxon, just knock him out and leave him.”

* * *

“Oh, are we kicking things?” the Master asked when they arrived at the building in Hong Kong to see someone trying to break in. “I would have worn my special boots if I’d known.”

The man, kind of gruff-looking with circles under his eyes, looked at them, hands hovering an inch away from the door. The definitely-locked metal door that looked like it opened out, yep, he definitely wasn’t getting in on his own. 

“Wanna tell us what you’re looking for?” Yaz asked, shifting almost imperceptibly so that her back was straighter, eyes darting around the man’s face.

The man stepped back a bit, turned to face them properly. The Master could tell from his face that he was tired, but when he spoke he just seemed determined, maybe a bit caught-off-guard. “DI Jake Willis. I have reason to believe there may be a missing person inside that building. And you are?”

The Master sincerely doubted that was all there was to the story, but he decided to wait and see if the human let anything slip up. They usually did. “We’re the ones who can open the door.” He took out the sonic then, walking over and pushing the man aside when he didn’t move fast enough. 

“How’d you get that?” Yaz asked, recognizing the screwdriver.

“The Doctor gave it to me before we left. Or I knicked it from her. Who can remember these things?” He opened the door, leaving the others to follow.

“Bit out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you Jake?” Yaz asked.

Jake, now using a flashlight to aid his eyes, said, “The case is related to one I was working on in England, I came to see it through.” _Lie._ The Master could tell even without looking at him. “What about you? Interpol? ESA?”

“Something like that,” Yaz said, not at _all_ suspicious. “Why would the European Space Agency send someone to Hong Kong?”

Jake looked at her in surprise. “To find their missing astronaut? Adam Lang? There was an equipment failure coming back from the International Space Station— you're not even looking for him, are you?”

“No, but we never said we were,” the Master pointed out. 

Yaz sighed before explaining, “There are unusual energy patterns coming from _this_ building. We're here to find out why. Didn’t even know someone was missing until you told us.” She briefly shone her light at the Master, then tamped down on a smile when he glared at her. “Think it’s connected?”

“Probably. Do you offer useless commentary and give information to strangers when the Doctor’s around? I might ask her if she’s willing to trade you in for a new one soon.”

“New what?” Jake asked, seeming very confused, but weren’t humans always? “Energy patterns?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just have fun and live in the moment.” Admittedly that might be difficult since they were in a very dark and dirty building investigating something that may or may not have to do with a missing astronaut. But he was trying to be optimistic (or at least pretend to be) since that seemed to be what the Doctor always did, and she was still alive. 

“So a man — a very _famous astronaut_ — is _missing_ , and no one’s looking for him?” Jake asked, voice rising in anger.

 _Ooh, personal, wonder what that’s about._ He could doubtless just take a quick peek inside the man’s mind and find out, but that sounded like something the Doctor wouldn’t like, and he _did_ promise to try to be less-bad. He decided to wait until Jake attempted to murder them to stoop to such measures. “Aren’t you a police-person? You’re looking for him.”

Then Jake got all shifty and said, “Yeah,” before shutting up.

Fine with him. They kept walking, the Master using the sonic to scan the rooms. They stopped in front of a door. “In here.” He started to aim the sonic before Jake simply kicked the door in. “Alright, no need to act impressive, I’m a married man.”

“So am I,” Jake said cryptically, pushing the door open. The room was the part of the building not entirely disgusting, with a set of advanced alien-tech in the center, including a transmitter and some sort of panel with a human figure on it. 

“Oh, perfect!” the Master said before immediately pressing the button without another thought, because what was he supposed to do? _Not_ press the button?

The room lit up, revealing a pale, unconscious man in a spacesuit on a hospital bed, hooked up to a variety of important-seeming tubes and machines. 

“Adam?” Jake whispered when he saw him. Then, louder, “ _Adam!_ ” He ran forward, gently cradling the man’s face before looking at the alien tech that surrounded him. “I need to get this stuff off him!”

“Hold on,” Yaz said, grabbing Jake’s arm. “Don’t just go ripping it all out, you could make it worse! We need to figure out what this stuff is and how to get it off safely.”

“And how long is that gonna take?”

The Master shrugged, scanning the alien panel. “No idea.” A moment later, the comdot on his neck activated. He pressed it, answering, “What do you want?”

“I found a dead bird in Peru,” Ryan responded, by now expecting the Master’s gruffness. “And a woman just vaporized after coming into contact with one last night.”

“And I missed it?” Well, maybe the astronaut would die. That would be fun. “Stay there and don’t mess anything up, we’re in the middle of something right now.” He went about separating the panel from the machinery it was connected to before Graham called a moment later to say that he had _also_ seen someone explode, and now it was really pissing him off. Didn’t _he_ also deserve to have some fun?

Then three people in gas masks and rubber suits came in and started shooting at them, so his mood improved.

The Master laughed to remind everyone how manic he was as he took out his Tissue Compression Eliminator and shot one of the people, ducking behind an empty barrel a moment later. “Oh, this is great!” Another shot, and something very large and made of metal fell from the ceiling close to them. “We should probably go, though.”

Jake quickly got Adam down, since the danger of being shot at outweighed the danger of a few torn-out tubes, and they made it out through a hallway. Shots fired at them as the Master was unable to get another good shot, their assailants rudely seeking cover behind walls or random pieces of debris.

“You came,” Adam whispered to the man desperately hauling him out of the building.

“Course I did,” Jake said quietly, though loud enough for Time Lord ears to pick up. “You needed me.”

“You two know each other?” Yaz asked, which didn’t seem like a particularly important detail given the circumstances. “You said you were a copper!”

“ _Ex_ -copper,” Adam, who’d apparently decided to be conscious while the Master wasn’t looking, said.

“Can we not do this _now?_ ” Jake asked, ducking his head after a shot almost got him.

“I hate to say this, but I agree with the new human,” the Master said in annoyance. A moment later, another rubber-suited individual jumped out at them, but before it could shoot, Jake ran forward and kicked it in the stomach, quickly snatching its gun up as the Master moved to catch Adam’s unsupported side. “Great, now how am _I_ supposed to kill people?”

"Oh, I'm sure you have your methods," Yaz snarked.

Jake ignored him in favor of shooting at another attacker, which was _not_ fair at all. When it seemed they were safe, he looked at Adam. “I’m on sabbatical.”

“So am I,” Yaz pointed out, “but I don’t go around telling people I’m police!”

“Don’t believe anything he says,” the astronaut said, still looking like he would pass out at any moment and not being particularly helpful at keeping himself upright.

“Maybe I just don’t _get_ human relationships,” the Master began, “but didn’t he just come halfway around the planet to find? Might show a bit of gratitude.” 

Yaz looked at him in disbelief. “ _You’re_ talking about relationships? Haven’t you and the Doctor tried to kill each other a hundred times?”

“Foreplay.” Dropping Adam’s arm and ignoring Jake as he hurried to take it, he walked forward, scanning the dead downed attacker. “Non-terrestrial. Suit probably blocked the Tardis’s scan for life signals.” He tried to take the thing’s mask off before shrugging and kicking it instead. Not for any particular reason, he just wanted to. “Alright, let’s go.” There was medical equipment on the Tardis, he could get one of the humans to set Adam up while he hopefully got to see someone explode.

“Hold on,” Yaz said.

The Master rolled his eyes. “What now, Yazzie?”

Ignoring the nickname, Yaz said, “That panel is still back there. Seems important. I want to get it.”

“I’ve already missed _two_ people-splosions, now you want to make us waste time here so I can miss this one?” He pointed his thumb at Adam.

“What?” Jake asked, voice rising.

“No worries.”

“Just pick me up in an hour or so,” Yaz said. “We need to know why Adam was taken and what they did to him, and how this is all connected to everything else.”

“Oh, well if it doesn’t waste _my_ time, I don’t care. Have fun.” A moment later, he checked his comdot. “Might drop off this girl Ryan met. She sounds kind of useless.”

* * *

“How’s it going so far?” the Doctor asked over a screen, the Tardis having told her they were all on board.

The Master turned the screen so it was facing him. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I woke up for a snack!” She held up a bowl of sliced bezai fruits to prove her point, popping another into her mouth. “And I’ll have you know, I’m actually feeling much better!”

“Really?” He artfully arched a brow. “Can you stand up?”

“. . . There’s no need to be mean. And you still haven’t answered my question!”

He smiled fondly before responding. “So far we have two dead people, one from Peru and the other from Madagascar, and a sick astronaut on the Tardis.” At the moment, Graham was explaining the bigger-on-the-insideness of the box to their guests, which the Master ignored since it really did get old after a while. “I took a blood sample,” possibly with a bit more force than necessary, “but haven’t analyzed it yet.”

“Oh, it sounds interesting,” the Doctor whined, falling back on her huge pile of pillows. “I bet if I—”

“I see where you’re going with this, and _no_ , _especially_ since we have no idea if this thing’s contagious. You’re immunocompromised right now, which means _you_ are going to rest and not get out of that bed.”

“And what are you gonna do about it?”

“I don’t have to _do_ anything, you can barely move!”

“Oi! Don’t rub it in!”

“Have a good nap, love.” He turned the com off, smiling at the final frame of the Doctor’s face scrunched up in indignation.

“Oi, you,” Graham said, drawing the Master’s attention.

“I have a name.”

“Yeah, and I’m not going around calling you ‘Master’ all the time.” He held up his phone. “Suki and Aramu, the scientists I talked to in Madagascar, called. Said they saw something unusual.”

* * *

“Hm,” the Master said, looking up at the swarm of angry birds. “Well, that definitely counts as unusual.” He looked at Suki. “Also, I’m going to commandeer your lab.” Since the Doctor still wasn’t letting him use any of _hers_. 

Graham and Jake helped Adam, _somehow_ looking even worse than earlier, from the Tardis, speaking as they walked. “So you two know each other how?” Graham asked.

At the same time that Jake said, “We’re married,” Adam said, “We’re separated.”

“I came halfway across the planet!” Jake pointed out.

“Seven months too late.”

“For fuck’s sake,” the Master said, whipping around to glare at them. “Fix your marital issues when one of you isn’t dying! Or at least when I don’t have to listen to it! People are _exploding into dust_ , and you’re keeping me from enjoying it! Now, move!” When they didn’t jump to obey, he laced his voice with hypnotism and barked, “ _Move, move, move!_ ”

That worked. Soon, everyone was inside the lab. The Master decided to keep using his telepathic powers for a bit since the Doctor didn’t know he was cheating. “Ryan, dissect that gross-smelling bird. Graham and Jake, try to get an IV for Adam, and remember, it’s _okay_ if he dies. Scientist-human, I need a high-powered microscope, blood cultures, rapid genome sequencing, a spectrophotometer, and a fast incubator.”

“I have . . . _most_ of that?” Suki said.

The Master sighed. “You humans are so frustrating. Fine, just get what you do have and I’ll work from there.” While the humans set about their tasks, he downloaded the initial readings he’d gotten from Adam on the sonic, frowning when he saw them. “Hm. That’s probably not good. _Very_ not-good, even.”

“What?” Jake asked from beside his husband. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing really, aside from alien pathogen that infected him and is probably killing him as we speak.” Along Adam’s neck was a growing row of shiny, plastic-like scales. “Companion-humans, is this what you saw on the ones who died?”

“Yeah,” Graham said, still setting up the IV. “Just like that. Then, poof!” He made a blowing-up gesture with his hands, then quickly dropped his eyes when he noticed the looks Adam and Jake were both sending him. 

“Yep!” The Master said cheerfully. “And if we don’t stop it soon, it’ll probably kill this one too. So, good or bad news depending on whose perspective you’re looking at.”

Jake looked at his husband for a moment before turning and storming out of the lab. 

At first the Master thought, _Perfect, one less human to deal with._ Then he remembered that he was supposed to be acting less-bad, and if the humans told the Doctor about his mind control (which they doubtless would, loud-mouths), then it would probably be useful to have something good he did to fall back on.

He groaned irritably before downloading the information onto a laptop and passing it to Suki. “Here, do something with this.” He straightened his coat before walking outside, quickly finding Jake sitting on the beach. “Not exactly helpful in an emergency, are you? I can see why you’re not a police officer anymore.”

“Just go away.”

Fair enough. He tried a different approach. “What did he mean when he said, seven months too late?”

Jake hesitated before admitting, “I was supposed to come out and see him launch. Say goodbye as he went off to the ISS.”

“And you didn’t go.” The Master stood beside him, not sitting down because his suit was new and expensive (not that he’d paid for it).

Jake, whose problems were apparently so bad he was willing to speak to the _Master_ about them, exclaimed, “He knew what he was taking on with me! I don't _do_ emotions. And I'm really not good at sticking with things, you know? Commitment. Also, I really don't like foreign travel.”

“Wow. You sound like a real catch.”

Jake laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Lucky bloke, isn’t he?” He was staring at the sunset, not quite looking at anything. “My husband is an _astronaut_. Do you have any idea how hard it is being married to somebody that impressive?”

The Master tilted his head. “I do, actually. Not what I thought it would be.” 

Jake nodded, half-looking at him. “It sort of sends me the other way. I wallow in being unreliable. Like I'm punishing him.”

“Or yourself,” the Master said quietly, for reasons even he didn’t understand. The sun was bright. Golden.

“It’s just . . . if he's _that_ impressive, that _amazing_ — which he is — then he can't love me the way he says he does. Why would he?”

Surprising himself, the Master sat down beside him, holding resting his head on one hand. “No idea.”

* * *

When they went back inside, the Master reminding Jake that it was very likely Adam would die soon and they probably both should be there when it happened, Suki told him, “I've gene-sequenced blood cultures from Adam and that bird. If I track changes in the optical density and confirm the bacteria's growth rate, we might be able to use that data to genetically engineer a virus to attack the pathogen.”

“Finally, a human who’s _not_ a complete idiot. Get started on that. Anyone else have an update?”

Adam was, predictably, still dying, but Ryan had something interesting. “Take a look at this bird,” he said, because their lives were weird. “ _Full_ of plastic.”

“Well, what do you expect, this is early 21st-century Earth. Any Time Lord who ate something from here could tell you that.” It was one of the reasons he disliked Earth cuisine. Well, except for jelly babies.

“Time Lord?” Suki asked in obvious shock.

The Master ignored her. “Yeah, no one cares.” He checked the sonic readings again, comprehension dawning. “Oh! That’s clever!” Clever alien pathogens, finally something interesting. “The alien pathogens attacked the plastic, which metastasized as if it was living. This planet is _drowning_ in plastic, in the water, the plants, the food, the air. You’re _full_ of microplastics, and _this_ little bugger is _feasting_ on it!” Oh, the Doctor would _love_ this when he told her!

He cut a sample from the bird’s flesh, quickly sliding it under the microscope Suki had brought him. While he was still looking, Aramu came in, yelling, “The birds are getting angry!”

“Intelligent virus,” the Master muttered. “Attacking to infect or because it knows we’re onto it?” He couldn’t help a manic grin. “This is _fun!_ I’ll be happy even if Adam doesn’t die!”

“. . . Thanks?” Adam said, probably wondering if he’d started hallucinating at some point and never stopped.

“You’re welcome!” He looked closer. “I’d show you what’s happening, but honestly, you’re all too stupid to get it. Basically, the bird’s enzymes are fighting back, ganging up on the bacteria to allow natural decomposition.”

Suki looked over his shoulder, saying, “If we isolate and boost the enzyme, then splice them—”

“We'll have one pissed-off virus.” He paused, remembering something. “Has anyone checked on Yaz? Because I feel like I was supposed to do that by now, but I either forgot or didn’t care.”

* * *

Well, Suki was an alien who had brought the pathogen Praxeus to Earth on purpose (he respected that), and they had to abandon to lab to avoid being murdered by a flock of _birds_ (not even GIANT birds, just ugly sick ones), Praxeus had created an underwater environment of its own with a downed space ship, and Suki ended up dying anway ( _finally_ got to see someone explode), but they probably had a cure if Adam survived. Which he did. Progress!

He considered just taking off then, since it seemed like a dramatic moment, but he’d never hear the end of it.

“Praxeus is probably already spreading fast through the birds,” the Master said, resting in a chair and relaxing as the humans filled the organic fuel cells with the cure. “As soon as they’re full, we’ll set it on autopilot and send the ship into the stratosphere, and the engines will disperse the pathogen-killing virus. Easy win.”

“And you don’t think it would go faster if you helped?” Yaz snapped.

“No. Once it’s gone, it’ll rip a hole in the plastic-environment, and we’ll all be crushed by the ocean. _Hence_ the autopilot.” When it was done he sighed and set his tea aside. “Okay, everyone in the Tardis. Don’t run, I don’t feel like running.”

Of course, as soon as they were off the ship, the autopilot started to malfunction. 

The Master instinctively bared his teeth in frustration. “No time, no idea if it’ll work, but it’s about to leave and so should we.” He pushed the nearest human, who turned out to be Adam, forward. He ended up having to run anyway, narrowly managing to slam the Tardis doors shut as an explosion burned through the plastic tunnels, signaling the ship’s take-off. 

_Alright, count the humans . . ._ One, two, five . . . _Where’s Jake?_

“Jake?” Adam said, looking around for his husband. “He was right behind us!”

A moment later, a hologram came to life on the console, showing Jake in the shuttle’s pilot seat. “Are these comms on? Spacecraft to blue box, can you hear me?”

“Jake,” Adam said, running forward before gripping the console with white-knuckled hands. “Jake, what are you doing?”

“Manual pilot making up for broken autopilot. Any idiot can fly a spaceship, right?”

“Jake . . .” Adam shook his head, voice pained. “I don't want this.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I need this.”

“You're entering into the stratosphere,” the Master pointed out, sounding detached even to himself. “The automatic release has probably been shot to hell. The controls by your right hand will vent the antidote, just wait until you’re in position and flip the switches all at once.”

“The ship's gonna break up,” Adam said, growing desperate for a way out that didn’t exist.

“Adam?” Jake said quietly, eyes squeezed shut before he opened them. _Resignation._ He recognized the face. “Adam, I'm sorry I wasn't at the launch. This is me not dodging. Don't say I never listened to you.”

“I didn’t mean like this. Never like this.”

The Master examined a screen. “He’s done it. The antidote’s being dispersed into the jet streams.” Not bad, for a human. _Maybe . . . Oh, fuck it._ He ran around the console, flipping switches and pulling levers in a way all too familiar to him, just not from this side. In the millisecond before the ship broke apart completely—

The Tardis rematerialized, forming around Jake with no concern for the destruction outside. 

Jake opened his eyes, blinking as he slowly realized he wasn’t disintegrating. Adam walked forward slowly, shaking his head at his husband. “I hate you.” Then he pulled him into a kiss, and it must have seemed like nothing else in the universe existed.

The Master stared at the glowing golden crystals that filled the Tardis room before saying, “ _Fuck_ ,” and storming down a hallway.

* * *

The Doctor woke to the feeling of the Master’s fingers gently sifting through her hair. She smiled. “Hey.” She tried to sit up a bit before giving up and resting against him, one ear pressed to his chest. “How’d it go?”

The Master didn’t look at her, never ceasing the slow movements of his hand. “Did something weird today.”

The Doctor’s smile quickly fell. She looked up sharply. “Something bad?”

He laughed, sounding broken. “Worse. Something _good_. Didn’t even know why until it was over and I thought . . . Doctor, you need to _understand—_ " For once, he was uncertain, stumbling over his words and trying to find the thing to say. "With the plane, and again with Missy, and even when I left you at the end of time . . . I knew you'd come back. Even if on one level, I was _certain_ you’d die, I knew you never would. You always lived. And that . . . that made it a game. A way to get your attention. I knew you would survive. It's not just that you're clever, though you are. I could feel it. Here." He tapped his temple, and she felt their long-abandoned marriage bond flare to life, golden and shining and _right_. Her eyes slipped shut of their own volition, and she didn't think before allowing him into her mind, so connected to each other that his fragile happiness was hers, and his words seemed to come from her mouth as much as his own. He took her hands, setting each over one of his hearts. "And here."

She tried sitting up again, shifting until she was straddling his hips. “What’s going on? Really?”

Dark eyes stared back at her, wide and teary, and for once hiding nothing. “You need to see. You need to _know_.” He lifted her hands up to his temples before pushing forward, pressing their foreheads together.

_“I loved being you. Every second of it. Oh, the way you burn like a sun. Like a whole screaming world on fire. I remember that feeling, and I always will. And I will always miss it.” There was blood on Missy’s hands. Her own, from a lifetime ago._

_The memory moved forward. Saxon was bleeding out against the doorway, staring at her as she walked away. “Missy? Why?”_

_She stopped then, smiled. “Because he's right. Because it's time to stand with him. It's where we've always been going, and it's happening now. Today. It's time to stand with the Doctor.” This part of the memory was warm. Resigned, but hopeful. Full of possibility. The joy of reunion that they had both tasted so little of in their lives._

_“No. Never.”_

_She only paused a moment to look at him before continuing on, back to where they’d come from, back to what they’d been running from and to for so long._

_“Missy! I will_ **_never_ ** _stand with the Doctor!_

_She laughed. “Yes, my dear, you will.”_

_Then the blast of the laser screwdriver hit, and everything after that was pain and darkness and rage._

When the memory ended, there were tears on both their faces. The Doctor could _feel_ the four-beat rhythm of his hearts, wondered if the sound could shake her to the bones and break her into pieces. “If I’d known . . . if I’d even _thought_ , just for a _moment_ , I would have gone back for you.”

The Master, try as he might, could not stop his voice from wavering. “Don’t you see though, Doctor? I _tried_. I actually _wanted_ to be good. I would have stood with you, stayed with you for a thousand years.” He shook his head. “When I woke in the grass three days later, I knew it didn't matter. The hatred and the anger, it was still there. _Worse_ , even. It grew, festered. A long, painful regeneration brought about by a literal murder-suicide couldn’t cause anything good.” His arms tightened around her shoulders, almost choking her. “ _Nothing_ can ever calm the anger in me. _Nothing_ can put that fire out, even if I _try_ , even if I _want to_. Doctor, even you can't love a monster into a hero.”

“I don’t care,” the Doctor said. She could tell what he wanted, for her to do just that. _Love him._ For once, she didn’t lie. “I don't _want_ to put the fire inside you out. I don't want you to be completely different. I want _you_. I want you to stand with me. You don't have to be good, you just have to try to be better than the day before.”

“What if I mess up?” He asked, close to breaking down completely. “Again?”

“I'm sure you will. I know I have. Just try again. I’ll still be here, with you, no matter what.”

He stared at her, fear and desperation and _hope_ in his eyes. “Promise? No leaving this time, either of us?”

She took his hands, twining their fingers together and rejoining their minds. “Promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me acknowledging Missy: I'm going to give the shippers everything we wanted in the actual god-damned show


	10. It's All Kind of Falling Apart, Isn't It?

_14 Months_

“You’re _insane_ ,” the Doctor said, aghast at the very suggestion.

“No, my dear Doctor, you simply lack my vision.” The Master held up the paint swatches. “ _Teal_ -blue would look far better in the nursery than simple, boring _midnight-_ blue and we both know it.”

“How can we _‘both know it’_ if I lack your vision, hm?”

“I assume you don’t lack _functioning eyes_.”

She was aware that they were arguing in the middle of an Ikea in the 38th century. She knew that people were watching them with open curiosity. And she was quite certain that she was grinning like a madwoman. She didn’t particularly care.

“How about this: I’m the pregnant one, so I have final say on baby-room decorating decisions.”

“You can’t keep using that argument.”

“I can for the next four months.”

They stared each other down for far too long before the Master, with a highly-exaggerated pout that she didn’t doubt was real, gave in, grabbing several cans of the dark-blue paint and another of silver. “Fine,” he said, dropping them into the cart alongside the three mobiles they’d been unable to decide between and an elephant-giraffe hybrid plushie. “But we better not pay for any of this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” There was something nice about seeing him like this, domestic and almost normal (or as close as either of them ever got to it) in a way that neither of them had been in a long time. He had the same energy as always, thrumming just under his skin, though now it was carefully reined and harnessed. She could already picture him on the Tardis over the next few months, prowling the halls like a caged animal. In only a few weeks she would go on bed rest for the rest of pregnancy, and though he hadn’t said anything about it, she knew that he had no plans to leave the Tardis at all once she was at her most vulnerable.

Before, she’d hoped to avoid the One Hundred Days, a period of isolation that Borusa had told them about during the single class period they’d spent on Time Lord sexual reproduction. The final period of pregnancy was meant to be spent on bed rest as they waited out the fourth trimester. But she was an energetic person, always running, always moving. When she first realized she was pregnant, she figured she’d probably still be moving towards the end, just slower. Now that she already looked large enough to burst and slept more than three times as much as before, the idea of just laying down for a few months seemed lovely.

“Do you think I should take up knitting?” she asked absently as the Master carefully weighed the differences between one bouncing chair and another before deciding to get both. 

“What would you _knit?_ ”

“I don’t know. I knit a hat once. Didn’t go well, but there was yarn and needles. Might not have been knitting, come to think of it. And those might have been noodles rather than yarn.” She waited until he turned to toss an extra rattle in, bringing the total to eighteen. “But if I’m going to be laid up for so long, might as well have something to do with my hands.”

“I could bring you projects to work on. Machines, like when we were kids.”

The Doctor smiled. They were always working on some secret invention when they were children, things to make class less boring, to cheat on tests, to disrupt their classmates’ projects. Always trying to outdo each other, to impress each other. They’d never really stopped.

“That’ll be fun.”

Later, when they were in the Tardis with their (secretly paid-for) goods and the paint was opened, the Master said, "You know you could just ask the Tardis to make a room up, right?"

"Yes, but where's the fun in that?"

"Fun? I'm the one painting, you're just sitting in that chair you insisted on getting!"

At his reminder, she sent the chair moving again (a chair that _rocks_! _Genius._ ) "Yes, and I'm having fun watching you."

He rolled his eyes, but acquiesced without further protest. Sleeves rolled up to his forearms and eyebrows furrowed in careful concentration, he began to paint.

There was something soothing about this. Meditative. Ritualistic, even. They’d painted and decorated for Selene and Helio too, both in the TARDIS and the house they occasionally occupied on Mount Perdition. It would have felt wrong not to do it.

“Are we happy?”

The Master drew back, obviously taken aback by the sudden question. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Not a trick question. Just seeing.”

He stared at her for a moment before returning to the paint. “How should I know? When’s the last time either of us was happier for more than a moment?” They were angry words, or at least meant to be, but there was no bite behind them. It was another moment before his hand stilled. “I think we are.” He looked back at her, determined to tear away the veil of seriousness that hung over the room. “And I've been doing _much_ better. Remember last month when a stranger touched your stomach, and I only broke their arm instead of killing them?”

“That was big. I was proud of you.” She sat while he finished with the blue, sometimes in silence, sometimes bantering or making plans for the coming weeks. When the space-blue paint dried, she stood up and opened the silver. “I’ll do the stars.”

* * *

The thing is, they _were_ happy. For a single shining moment, that was all they were. 

They were just returning to the Tardis after a trip to see the Festival of Red (the lights were always beautiful, and it was the last trip they planned to make with the companions for a while) when she froze in place and grabbed the Master’s hand. “Shh!”

“I wasn’t talking—”

“ _Shh!_ ” Her fingers caressed his. By then, their bond was alive and well once more, although a few slight barriers remained in place for the sake of privacy and so they weren’t overwhelmed by constantly having the other’s mind weighing on them. She dropped them now with practiced ease, inviting him in. “Feel that?”

He only searched for a moment before he found it. Something warm and soft and glowy, accompanied by the familiar sound of a baby’s coo. 

The Doctor smiled, then winced slightly. “Oh.” The Master sensed it before she did, and his arms wrapped around her as she collapsed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short because this and the next chapter were gonna be one normal/big chapter, but then I was like "that cliffhanger tho ..."  
> I feel kind of bad about it, BUT, I swear it's not as bad as it seems, I wouldn't do that to y'all
> 
> also I time-skipped, but I don't feel bad about that because it's time for plot to happen


	11. Well, You Don't Have To Be A Bitch About It

_Memories III._

“Are you ready to go?”

Koschei didn’t look at him. He was staring at the window onto the liberated planet, and had been for a while. His eyes were dark, tired. And blue, so blue. It used to be that Selene was the spitting image of him — same eyes, same pale skin and dark hair — but neither had seen their daughter in so long. It seemed to him that Selene was softer. And besides, Koschei rarely shaved now, where before his face was clean and smooth. The day before, he’d looked . . . scruffy. But this morning he’d washed and combed his hair, and his dark beard had been cut down to a goatee. He didn’t look _bad_ , just . . . harsh.

Finally, Koschei leaned back, straightening his shoulders. Still, he didn’t face him. If he wanted his husband’s attention, Theta would have to make him look. Grab him, turn him around.

He stayed where he was.

“This isn’t working, is it?” Koschei wasn’t asking. Not really. “Since . . .”

“Don’t say it,” Theta whispered. “I know.”

Koschei nodded once, eyes fixed on something outside. “I thought that . . . if we got away from Gallifrey. Didn’t talk about it, didn’t think. Everything would just . . .” He sighed, pressed his head against the cool glass. “I miss our son. We should never have sent them to the academy. We should have . . . he should have been here. With us, seeing the universe.”

“I know.” His voice cracked. His hair was turning white. Two hundred years old, and already he felt close to regeneration. _Stress. Stress and grief._ Neither of them was the person they’d been a year ago.

“I was thinking I might stay. For a while, at least. Rebuild.”

Theta couldn’t help a smile. “So you’ll really be the Master, then? Properly?”

Koschei chuckled. “I suppose so.” He looked, finally, and there was concern in his eyes. Concern and love and grief and exhaustion. “Do you want to stay with me?”

“Do you want me to?” _Ask me to say,_ Theta thought, shielding his mind so Koschei didn’t hear. _Ask me to stay, and I will._

“Do whatever you want to do, Theta.”

Theta felt his hearts close off, their bond seeming to wither and die. “I’ll go. I'll send you a TARDIS when I get home.” _So you can come back._ But he didn't know if either of them would ever come back.

Koschei looked away again. “Alright.”

He might have left then, but he didn’t have the hearts. Instead, he walked forward slowly, like he was approaching a wounded predator. When he reached out a hand, Koschei didn’t flinch away. His fingers curled around his husband’s jaw, making the other Time Lord face him. He wanted to kiss him, but if he did he would never be able to stop. Instead, he pressed their foreheads together, and for a single moment they shared their pain and their love. His voice was hardly a whisper, but he knew Koschei heard him. “When you need me . . . I’ll be there.” Love was a promise, wasn’t it? This could be theirs.

Koschei breathed, holding him like he couldn’t bear to let go. “Always.”

* * *

_14 Months_

“I’m _telling_ you, I’m fine— OW!”

The Master scowled at her as he pushed the IV into her vein, setting her arm down. “You’re not fine. You passed out and we don’t know why. It took an hour to get you awake, and I scanned all of the Tardis’s databases, looked at all _three_ of the books we have on Gallifreyan pregnancy, and we have no idea _why_. Your blood pressure is barely raised!”

“I don’t know either, but I’m okay!”

He crossed his arms, managing to perfectly combine concerned and unimpressed into one expression. “Alright. Stand up then.”

She scoffed. “Seriously?”

He shrugged, looking at her expectantly. “Sure. If you’re okay, stand up and walk to the door on your own.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” Setting her arms up straight on the medbay bed, she slowly moved her legs around and started to push herself up. “See.” She stood with one hand gripping the bed railing. “I . . . am perfectly capable—”

She'd only let go for a moment before her hands went scrambling for his chest. He took her in his arms, quickly putting her back in bed. "You're okay," he whispered reassuringly, "I'm here. Nothing will happen to you while I'm here."

A dangerous promise, but one she was grateful for nonetheless. She buried her face in his neck, letting his gentle fingers brush through her hair, comforting her.

"It's okay. You're okay. I'll make it okay."

* * *

It was something like morning when a knock sounded from the Tardis door.

Yaz, Graham, and Ryan were whispering to each other in the console room. None had seen either of the Time Lords since the night before when the Master closed them out of the medbay. Not a peep, a single word of clarity or reassurance. 

So it was really not a good day for someone to knock on the door _, while they were in the vortex._

Ryan stood first, trying to infuse his voice with the same authority that the Master and Doctor had. "Who's there?" It wasn't perfect.

"An acquaintance of the Doctor. Open the door. Now."

"Oh?" Yaz challenged. "And how do we know—"

"I know who it is," the Master said, suddenly brushing into the room. "I invited them." 

"What? Who the hell are you to just—"

" _Shut. Up."_ He snapped, clearly not in the mood for a discussion, though he rarely was with them. Putting his back to them, he opened the door.

A woman, dark-skinned with her hair in a tight ponytail and wearing asymmetrically cut black clothes, stepped into the Tardis. She looked around with a face of mild curiosity before her expression fell on the man in front of her. "Master."

"Rani."

She stepped past him, not waiting for a proper invitation. "This is the Doctor's TARDIS. Which means you either stole it, or you've teamed up with them on something, but you were both in over your heads, and now you want me to clean up your mess." She looked over the humans with dark, dispassionate eyes, like they were bacteria in a petri dish (not even _interesting_ bacteria) and said, "Considering the living humans onboard, I assume it's the latter."

"Something like that." He didn't check to make sure she was following before he started walking down the hall. "I'll show you to the Doctor. You'll understand when you see."

The humans shared a what-the-fuck look amongst themselves before rushing to join them. "And who are you?" Yaz asked incredulously. 

"A former classmate of ours," the Master explained as they slipped onto a new hallway, the artificial gravity keeping them from falling straight down. 

"Wow. You guys went to school with some interesting people. Anyone else we should know about? A mysterious parent, perhaps? A long-lost identical twin?"

Neither the Master nor the Rani lowered themselves to answer that.

Soon they were in front of the medbay, sterile white door staring down at them. The Master looked back at her once, face carefully closed-off, before opening it.

The Rani and the Doctor stared at each other. She stepped forward slowly, eyes flicking over the screens that covered one wall, then to the thin blanket pulled up to her chest. “. . . You two never did do things by half.”

The Doctor scrunched her face in irritation, turning her head to face the Master. “Why did you call her?”

The Master casually leaned against a wall, unrepentant. “Well love, no one else has the unique combination of 'willing to talk to us' and 'expert in all things relating to Time Lord biology'.”

“I don’t know why you think I’d help, either,” the Rani pointed out, not bothering to look at them as she began to look through the medbay’s database, passing through the past fourteen months of information and samples.

The Doctor pulled herself up until she was sitting, making herself smirk. “And when else are you going to get a chance to observe a pregnant Gallifreyan?”

She didn’t pretend to know the Rani the way she knew the Master, but Ushas was a scientist. By the time she was thirty, she could kill a Time Lord, dissect them, and bring them back if she wanted. And she loved an experiment.

“Well . . .” She took off her leather gloves and stashed them in her pocket. “I mostly do vivisections. I suppose this is like that, but with anesthetics.”

* * *

The Doctor winced when the Rani removed her surgical glove, squirming. “That was invasive.”

“I made it as comfortable as I could.”

“You did _not_.”

The Master looked at her expectantly. “Well? What’s wrong with her?”

The Rani looked up at him with annoyance, washing and drying her hands off. “I’m not done yet.”

“You’re _not?_ ” The Doctor demanded, dropping her head on the pillow. “Even the Master hasn’t gotten this handsy with me since that time with Cleopatra—”

“Spare me the details. I’m sure it was impressively perverse and disgusting.” The Master’s chuckle confirmed her suspicions. Ignoring him, she stood next to the top of the bed, holding her hands out expectantly. “I need to examine your mind.”

“ _No_ ,” the Doctor and the Master said at the same time, both of them glaring at their old classmate. 

The Rani rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Like I would pull something on your ship while one of the most dangerous monsters Gallifrey ever produced stares me down.”

“I’d believe it,” the Master snarked back.

She smiled condescendingly. “You asked for my help. And you're a far better telepath than me anyway, you'll know if I do something. I'm sure you could leave me drooling in a cell someone in the depths of this museum piece if you wanted."

"And you'd just go easily?"

"No. But frankly, you're not worth the effort."

They stared each other down for far too long before the Doctor snapped, "Just get it over with, please, I am _starving_ and I want my custard creams."

The Rani, no more amused than she ever was, leaned forward, resting her fingers on the Doctor's temples.

It wasn't like with the Master. She felt the Rani's mind as a cold, silent observer, making her feel awkward and self-conscious in her own mind. The other Time Lord worked swiftly, passing through memories and pulling on the threads of the Doctor’s mind until the Doctor could feel blood run down her hand from how hard she was pinching herself.

Then the presence ripped itself out, gone as fast as it had showed up. The Doctor gasped like she was coming up for air, her hand scrambling for something to hold onto until the Master took it, lacing their fingers together. His mind rejoined hers, soothing her. 

“Got you,” he whispered, and the Doctor squeezed his hand.

The Rani rolled her eyes at them before speaking. “You’ll be glad to know that physically, you’re perfectly healthy. For now, at least. Which is shocking considering what I know of your eating habits. Might want to watch your blood pressure.”

“Psychically?” the Doctor said quietly, leaning forward. Her bloody hand was staining her hospital gown.

“Less so.”

. . . “Well don’t hold me in suspense!”

The Rani found her black leather gloves and put them back on, speaking unhurriedly. “In the Looms, our minds our connected to the Matrix in a type of mental web. We draw on the strength of our ancestors to develop our own mental and telepathic abilities. Before the Looms, families offered a similar sort of psychic support, dozens of Gallifreyans joining their minds in a way we haven’t seen in millenium. Even then, the mental strain could kill wear them out. It weighs on the body, the brain and the hearts. At the same time as this begins, the fetus begins to drain your regeneration energy. These days we replicate and add it to the Looms . . .” Her smile was mocking. “But you never could do anything properly, could you Theta?” She moved on before either could respond. “It will weaken you at a cellular level. You _might_ survive, but knowing how difficult you always make things, you won’t. And you won’t be able to regenerate. It will take days for your body to replenish it on its own. Worst comes to worst and you won’t have that time.”

She started to walk across the room, hands stipled like she was considering an interesting math problem. “You can't remove the fetus manually, not this late in. An incubator would be nice, but doing so will tear its mind from the Doctor's and stunt its telepathic and mental development. You'll mess it up for life.” She smirked. “Of course, both your children are already damaged. The living one, at least—”

Before she could say another word, a hand closed around her neck, and the Master was carefully counting his breaths as he held her still against a wall. “Rani . . . you’re making it very hard not to kill you.”

At first, she kept her expression carefully controlled. Her respiratory bypass would have kept her gowing a half hour after she stopped breathing. But the Master’s hold tighened, and she could feel her bones and muscles move under the strain. She moved her hand, trying to make it seem like fear or scrabbling—

The Master grabbed the poison-slicked blade with his spare hand, dropping it to the floor and crushing it under his shoe. “ _Don’t. Don’t even try—_ ”

“Let her go!”

He stopped, looking at the Doctor with wide, angry eyes. It took a moment for him to see her. She was exhausted, couldn’t even move from her bed, but she was looking at them with annoyance, and anger, and tiredness, and love, and fear, and determination, and he could not deny her. He let the Rani go, and her feet landed on the floor with a pained thud. She rubbed her neck, giving the Master a dirty look.

He grinned in return. “So, what do you think we should do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, info dump, my bad
> 
> I've never actually watched an episode with the Rani, so if I was completely off, just pretend this is some non-Rani character
> 
> angry feral master + protective master = near disaster


	12. Yeah, This Is A Set-Up Chapter, But Stuff Happens In The Next One

_15 Months_

The blue box appeared at dawn, as the twin suns rose over Karn. Ohila saw it as she left the room that the Sacred Flame was secured in, stopping in her tracks as she peered out a window and saw the Tardis. Then she was walking, stealing looks every chance she got to see if it had moved, if the door had opened. It was raining when she stepped outside. She pulled her robes closer and ignored it.

When other members of the Sisterhood saw the ship, they joined her, muttering amongst themselves. She ignored them, waiting to see what the Doctor will do now.

The answer was apparently nothing. The ship remained only a short walk away from the sprawling red temples of the Sisterhood, the light on top never going out, the door never opening. She realized, with no small amount of exasperation, that they were expected to make the next move. _Typical._

Without warning her sisters, Ohila broke rank, moving forward through the warm water pouring down her face. Before she could even raise her hand to knock, the Tardis door opened. When she didn’t immediately move, a voice called out from a room within. “It’s open for a reason.”

She didn’t move.

A minute later, a man — _Time Lord_ , she knew instinctively — came into the console room then, all at once haughty, annoyed, interested, tired, and, if the slight tremor in his hands was to be believed, _scared_. 

Her first thought was, _Doctor._ But no, she knew those eyes, no less dark or angry or insane than they were two thousand years ago. She folded her hands behind her back to hide her fear, and said pleasantly, “Master.”

The Master smiled cruelly and his mouth opened, only to close a moment later. When he spoke, it was clear he was holding back. “Ohila.” He only stared at her a moment longer before saying, “The Doctor is in the Medbay.” He walked without looking to see if she followed. It was a habit with him. 

It didn’t take long. The Tardis had shifted so that the Medbay was only a few steps from the console room. The door retracted into the wall without either of them touching it. As soon as she stood within the doorway, the problem became obvious. The Doctor, having since regenerated into a female form, lay in a hospital bed. Exhaustion was written in her face and eyes, in her hands. She was concentrating hard on her breathing, chest moving with her large stomach, and it took a moment for her to even notice them. When Ohila looked between the Time Lords, she could see their connection, and another tethered to it. Small and new, but glowing white-and-gold.

“Doctor,” Ohila said with a sly smile. “How _good_ to see you again.”

“Don’t,” the Doctor moaned.

Ohila continued. “How strange it is. I spoke to your daughter recently. She inquired to me about something she called the Timeless Child.” She reveled a bit in the way they flinched, the obvious psychic pain in their faces. “I told her I knew nothing, of course.” A lie. She knew with perfect clarity the truth that Selene sought, and although she told them now lest they find out from their daughter, she had no intention to let it slip to any of them. She quite liked living. If nothing else, it seemed preferable to the alternative.

“We’re not here for that,” the Master said, voice low, but not with anger. The Doctor was not the only one who had dedicated their mind to another.

“Oh, I can plainly tell what you need.” Their minds were frayed and worn. The child’s development had clearly pushed them to the limits of their psychic abilities. The members of the Sisterhood of Karn were famous for their telepathic abilities and often formed the sort of large telepathic webs that they needed, sometimes involving dozens of people. And they were _just_ on the edge of Gallifrey’s domain. Close enough to claim relation and have the resources so desperately needed by the two renegades; separate enough to hope that they wouldn't lead the Time Lords right to them. “What I ask is why you think we’ll help?”

“ _Because_ ,” the Master said through gritted teeth, staring at her, “I’ll burn the entire Kasterborous system down if you don’t.”

“Master,” the Doctor said tiredly, trying to soothe him mentally before wincing instead. “Please, we just need three months. And you owe me!”

Ohila arched a brow, smiling. “ _Owe_ you? Doctor, you saved _Gallifrey_ , not Karn.”

“She _saved_ this whole universe!” the Master snapped. “And that means a life debt is owed.”

“And you, of course, have such respect for the traditions of your home and _always_ honor your debts?” 

The Master’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not about me because I know that _you_ do. You can pay it one way—”

“Or another?” she asked in amusement.

“ _Yes._ ”

Ohila chuckled before walking around the room, observing the Doctor from every angle she could. “You understand that we won’t revive you if it goes wrong. The war is over, we have no need of you.”

The Doctor must have seen how close the Master was to reaching for one of the surgical knives in the cabinets, because she spoke quickly. “Fine. Just get me there.”

* * *

_This is the most boring cult I've ever been a part of,_ the Master snarked, trying to lighten the mood. He was perched on the foot of the bed, one hand holding his head up and the other drawing meaningless patterns on the Doctor's palm. 

Karn, being the sister planet of Gallifrey, had apparently decided that everything had to be red. The walls were brick red, the wall _coverings_ were the ugliest shade of maroon, the thin gown they'd given the Doctor was crimson, and the windows were tinted _orange_ , which was close and also worse.

Still, that was not as strange as the twenty or so robed women that filled the bedroom, kneeling around the bed and holding hands as they chanted under their breath. 

_It's far from the worst,_ the Doctor pointed out. They could feel her energy grow as the weight on her mind gradually lightened, and soon she was smiling properly. _Besides, you hate any cult that doesn't worship you._

_What's the point of them otherwise?_

The Doctor chuckled, letting out a breath of relief when the chanting stopped. The strain was still there, but it was bearable now, allowing her to push it to the back of her mind as she focused on other things. She could feel the minds that were connected to all three of them now, but it was a feather-light presence, something she might not notice if she didn't think to. _My back hurts now._

 _Poor dear,_ he teased, relaxing some when the women started to disperse. "Want me to rub it for you?"

She couldn't quite tell if he was joking. Either way, she looked at him with the _sweetest_ puppy dog eyes. "Please?"

And, well. Who was he to deny such a request?

"It's going to be okay now," he murmured quietly as he massaged her back, unsure if he was trying to convince her or himself. Laying on her side now, the Doctor closed her eyes, one hand seeking out his arm and curling him closer around her back. "The worst is over." Hopefully. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fluff before the angst
> 
> (also before anyone asks, the companions are on Earth, they're fine)


	13. Kiss Me Once, 'Cuz It's Been A Long Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting for this one. Brace yourselves: we're getting ready for a lot of serious chapter titles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel like I should put a warning for childbirth and general grossness (I did research for this ... send help). So, consider yourself warned and feel free to skip towards the end of the chapter if you have to.

_Memories IV._

“ _THETA!_ ”

For a single instant, Theta froze in the center of the courtyard. Then he dropped his books and took off, ignoring the shouts from Ushas and Magnus as he sprinted towards the edge of campus, dodging columns, teachers, and classmates alike as he ran. He could _feel_ his oldest friend’s frustration as Koschei began to chase him. He ran harder.

They emerged into the red fields surrounding the school, and Theta slowed into an endurance run as they passed through neck-high grass. As he felt the strain build up in his legs, he realized his error. He was a better sprinter, but Koschei had more stamina, and Theta had wasted his energy on a single burst of speed and was already slowing down. Another minute and Koschei overtook him, knocking into his back. They fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs, echoing each other’s high-pitched yelps.

Theta tried to extract himself, but Koschei grabbed his arm with both hands, yanking him back down. Theta made an odd sound that was half-huff, half-whimper, managing to seem both annoyed and pathetic at the same time.

Before Koschei could demand an explanation, Theta yelled, "I didn't mean it!"

Koschei seemed to physically deflate, space-blue eyes growing withdrawn and embarrassed. "Oh—"

Theta launched into a rambling speech without even noticing his best friend's predicament, explaining, "I shouldn't have even _said_ anything, but it just came out! And Koschei, you know you're my best friend, and I care about you more than anything, and I never want to lose that, NEVER, I couldn't _bear it!_ But then I was saying it and I didn't know how to take it back, so I just ran away because I couldn't stand to hear you say you didn't feel the same way! See, don't you understand? Because I'm not asking you to say it back, or to feel anything like that, I would never dream of it, I swear, and I didn't even mean to _SAY—_ "

Grinning like a mad, love-struck fool, Koschei leaned forward and silenced Theta with a kiss. Theta stared eyes-wide in plain shock before leaning into him, one hand reaching up to clutch his friend's shirt as Koschei cradled his face.

It . . . wasn't a perfect kiss. Neither of them entirely knew what they were doing. Their noses kept bumping, Koschei's lips were dry and chapped, and Theta almost bit him in his delayed enthusiasm. But then their psychic shields fell, allowing their minds to flow in and around each other, like two rivers becoming one, and nothing else seemed to matter after that.

"I love you too," Koschei whispered against Theta's lips.

Well, one thing mattered.

* * *

_18 Months_

"Wake up.” Someone was shaking his shoulder, voice lowered in pain as they muttered, “ _Wake up, wake up, wake up—_ ”

The Master’s hand snapped out, instinctively wrapping around the Doctor’s wrist before he even opened his eyes. He sat up, immediately turning alert as he became aware of the Doctor leaning over him, eyes scrunched shit on pain, face pale and sweaty. _Five hundred forty-five days._ “Is it time?”

The Doctor scowled at him. “No, I thought you might want to wake up in the middle of the night to finish the season of _Great British Bake Off_ that we were watching—” She was cut off by another swell of _something_ , falling back on the bed as her hands gripped the white sheets. 

The Master quickly stood up, turning on a light and grabbing the Doctor's hands, untwisting her fingers and instead fitting them with his. All the while, he pushed his own emotions down until he could hardly feel them, projecting calm and quiet into her mind. "Can you move? Stand up, walk?"

She grit her teeth. "What do _you_ think—" She bit down on her lip, visibly grimacing. "No, not now."

"Alright. That's normal, right? We prepared for this." He wondered if she could hear the worry creeping into his tone. If she did, she didn't respond to it, simply nodding and squeezing his hand tighter.

When she was leaning against the headboard and breathing more-or-less evenly, he pulled the curtains back from the orange window. The first sun was just starting to rise. He watched for a moment before grabbing the comm from the small night table and speaking into it. “It’s time.”

Karn did not have hospitals or doctors as such — it was their mixtures, so-called “potions”, that provided their perfect health and immortality, and those had been denied to them — but there were several women who’d studied medicine and biology, and it was them who came now, carrying towels, sheets, pitchers of warm water, anesthetics, and sterile surgical tools.

The Doctor watched them before shutting her eyes, breathing through her nose. She felt the Master rubbing her back. “How are you doing?”

She stared at him a moment. Reminded herself that she had faced worse pain than this. Torture, regeneration, electrocution. This pain would at least lead to something she could look forward to. “I’ve got it.” She forced a smile when she looked at the Sister standing closest. “Painkillers? Please?”

“What kind—”

“ _Does it matter?_ ”

They finally gave her something, and it worked for a while. She leaned back, breathing in relief. She was still aware of the pain, but it felt much more distant now. The Master sat cross-legged beside her, one arm stretched around her shoulders. “The nursery’s all set up, right? Because I wanted to change the lights in there and I don’t remember if we ever did—”

“Graham and I did it before they left, pet. Everything’s ready.”

“Good, good. Just checking, you know. Nervous energy. You know what we should do after this, we should visit Marisol.”

“Which century?”

“Ooh, eight. I love Marisol in the eighth century. Pink skies. The most beautiful birds and blue mountains.”

“Safe, too. Good first trip for a baby.”

“Trouble has a way of finding us anyway,” she pointed out.

“You’ll just have to convince your Tardis to be more discerning about where it sends us in the future.”

“For the last time, I’m sure she didn’t mean to drop you in that swamp.”

“And I’m sure she did.”

The Doctor chuckled, a sound that evolved into a wince. “Painkillers wearing off.” Damn Time Lord body and its ability to process everything she poured into it. This was why she hadn’t gotten drunk in over a thousand years.

She asked for more medicine, but the more she took, the sooner the effects wore off, until it wasn't safe to give her more. She had never known a day as long as this. By the time the suns set again, contractions wracked her body, long waves of pain that started in her spine and ended in her stomach. There were no cities on Karn, no light pollution, and a million stars shined down on them. 

“It’s still not happening,” the Doctor muttered, rolling her head to face the Master. “Why isn’t it . . .”

“You’re nearly there,” one of the Sisters said. “Eight centimeters.”

“Please get out of my legs,” she growled. 

The Sister obliged.

To her stomach, the Doctor glared and said, “You’re lucky I already love you.”

Somehow, that seemed to be what did it. Legs propped uncomfortably, feeling highly exposed and exhausted, she felt the baby shift inside her. She shivered, sweat pouring down her forehead in rivulets. Time Lords were always so aware of every part of their body, their skin and flesh and bone and blood and nerves. Every sense was acutely felt. Time flowed in and around them. Seconds sped up and stretched on. Normally, she thought nothing of it. Now . . .

"It hurts,” she whispered, quietly enough that only the Master heard her. Then, louder, “It hurts, it hurts so much . . ." She was exhausted, down to her _cells_ , she was so tired. Her entire body felt drained, had for weeks. Now it was catching up to her.

 _If I stop, I die_ , she thought. _I might be dying now._ She shuddered. _If I stop now, we_ **_both_ ** _die._ And that was not acceptable.

“It’s time to push,” someone said.

“ _I got that_ ,” she snapped, shifting on the bed. The Master moved to stand, holding her hand. She squeezed hard enough to make him wince, but he said nothing in response, murmuring comfort into her ear and agreeing when she screamed at him. Which was often.

It took more than an hour to finish pushing. Which was very unfair. Human shows made it seem quick and easy. “I feel lied to— _OHHHHHHH!_ Oh, that was not fun!” Her head tossed back and forth. She stared at her husband pleadingly. “I can’t, I just can’t . . .”

“Yes, you can,” the Master said, running his fingers through her hair in the way she liked. “You’re the Doctor, you’ve been through worse. And aren’t you the one always saying to have hope? Strength of will and all that crap?”

“To _other_ people!”

“Well, I know how you hate to take your own advice, but now’s as good a time to start as any.”

She groaned. “Fine.” Hope, that was something she talked about a lot when things got hard, wasn’t it? And stars. The stars were still out. Some of them were close enough that she could make out their colors. Bright, glowing spots of white and blue and red and gold . . .

“There we go, love, almost there, just one more.”

She could feel her hearts beating painfully fast, knew he heard it too. Her nerves burned and died. A scream erupted from somewhere in the room. This time, it wasn’t hers. Then the shoulders passed, and soon she collapsed on the bed in relief.

When she could, she looked around the room. At some point, the sheets had been replaced with clean white ones. There was so much blood on them.

The Master was speaking to someone, then snapping at them, insisting the newborn be handed over to him. Someone reluctantly did so, and he used a damp towel to clean the blood and vernix away. He was smiling. Not the insane smile, the genuine one that made his eyes seem even larger and more teary than normal. He looked at the Doctor. “She’s perfect.”

Then he passed the baby into her arms. She reached out instinctively. Only a minute before, the newborn had been crying. Now, it looked up with curious eyes, the same dark brown color as the Master's.

The pain was still there, perhaps worse now, accompanied by a sort of emptiness, and the unsettled feeling she had after regeneration when it seemed her body was not her own. She smiled anyway. “Oh. Hello, little one. Awful lot of trouble for someone so tiny.”

The baby gurgled in confusion.

The Doctor could feel the exertion of the past year and a half chipping away at her, as though it had been waiting all this time to do so. She pushed it down so neither the Master nor the newborn in her arm could feel it. She kissed her tiny forehead. “I have something for you,” she whispered. “A name. When you're an adult you might not want it anymore. You might want to be a true renegade, to take a title that will show who you are. That's fine. This name is a gift, and gifts are yours to do with as you please.” And nothing could ever change their True Name, the one the universe gave them and only they knew.

“Aster,” she said, just for the three of them to hear. “Star.” The Archaic Gallifreyan word for star was the same as the word for hope. She didn’t think that was a coincidence.

She smiled, wide and bright and happen. She barely noticed the room fading around her.

Someone was whispering something. Was she still bleeding? She thought she might be. Earlier, her hearts had been pounding so hard she could feel it in her ears, but now they were slow and distant and quiet.

“Something’s wrong,” the Master said suddenly. Aster was lifted up and out of her arms, moved to a cot. The Doctor tried to take her back, but her arms were weak and didn’t obey her. Aster was crying.

This felt . . . different. She’d thought she knew what dying was like from regeneration. This was like . . . fading. _Painful_ fading. Slow. Like her body had simply given up.

“Doctor?” The Master was staring at her. She was pretty sure, at least. His hands were on her face. He seemed upset about something. “Doctor, don’t do this. Not now, we were so close.” He whipped around, shouting, “Do _something!_ ”

“Our work is done,” one of the Sisters said tonelessly. “Ohila was quite clear—”

“ _GET OUT!_ ” She thought he might have grabbed one of the women by the neck to throw them out. It was kind of a blur.

The last thing she heard before she slipped into unconsciousness was her daughter’s cries.

* * *

The dying would be slow and painful. He knew that. Even if her body couldn’t regenerate, it still wanted to, still hung on until the last possible moment. He should make it easier. He should . . .

No. He couldn’t do it. So many times, he’d tried to kill the Doctor, thinking he could do it, fooling himself into believing it was what he wanted. _Idiot._ He’d always been blind when it came to the Doctor. Of course _now_ would be when he saw clearly.

Every now and then, the Doctor took a single breath. Even her respiratory bypass system seemed close to giving out. He laid down next to her, holding his love in his arms, not caring about the sweat or blood, only focusing on the faint, occasional heartbeats. “C’mon, Doctor,” he whispered. “You’ve never been one to let impossible odds get to you. Don’t start now.” 

_Fucking universe_ , he thought harshly, ignoring the tears that painted his cheeks. _She’s done so much. We were so close, we were going to be happy again. Even if I don’t deserve it, she does._ He hardly realized when he started begging. _Anything, anything, what do you want? Don’t you know I’d give even my own life—_

He stopped, thinking. _Oh._

. . . 

Well, now it seemed obvious. 

He sat up, staring at the Doctor, focusing on his own innate sense of time until he could see it glowing bright and gold. The timelines were in flux, he could tell. Anything could happen.

No one on Gallifrey had ever loved like them. They were taught to suppress their emotions, not rely on them. Even marriages were a matter of politics and necessity, nothing else. Not like them. They let each other into their minds when they were children and never really left. They were binary stars, two blindingly intense entities forever whirling around each other. They were never meant to be apart, they belonged together. A universe without the Doctor . . . There was no point to living in a world like that.

It was insane, possibly the most insane idea he'd ever had. He didn't think a single one of his past selves would have considered it. Even Missy would have railed against the loss of her lives, even if it meant saving the Doctor. No other incarnation of the Master would have even thought of it . . . except for the first. Except Koschei.

Now, he didn't hesitate, didn't let himself think. Aster’s sad, confused whimpers drove him forward. He brushed damp locks of hair from the Doctor’s forehead. Her eyes were closed, but that didn’t keep him from staring at her. Inches from her face, he whispered, “Theta.” And he kissed her.

It felt like he was being ripped apart from the seams when regeneration energy started to leak out of him, but he didn’t stop. He poured it into her, feeling her come to life beneath his hands. He cried when her hearts sped up. Another moment, and he felt her move, pressing against him and raising a hand to hold him to her.

“ _Koschei._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not what anyone's thinking about, but I thought of changing the spelling of Aster to Astor because I noticed Aster is just Master without the "M", but Astor is apparently already a name meaning "Thor" or "thunder", and that didn't fit with my theme, so now it's here
> 
> Also, awww! Baby! Kisses! Stuff that's going to have immediate consequences in the future! We love to see it!


	14. My Love, Won’t You Stay A Thousand Years?

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a . . . what is it again?” She sat back in the bed, Aster watching curiously from her lap. “Koschei, how does it go again?”

“I don’t know,” he said, checking again to make sure they had everything before they left. “You’re the expert on Earth culture.”

The Doctor watched him, smiling. Aster was everything they’d hoped for, healthy, happy. When she wrapped a tiny hand around the Doctor’s finger, she almost cried in joy. She’d forgotten how wonderful it was to hear a baby’s laugh, feel their soft downy hair. They couldn’t have asked for more.

Why did that scare her?

“What happened after I blacked out last night?”

The Master froze for a moment, spine stiffening, but he forced himself to relax. A sort of veil fell over his mind, not enough to keep her out if she tried, but it would keep her from seeing anything so long as she didn’t look too hard. “Your hearts slowed. You were losing a lot of blood. I got some equipment from the Tardis and revived you.” He turned to smile at her. “Simple as that.”

Aster gurgled unhappily, something the Doctor vaguely translated as _‘Why are you upset? Why aren’t you paying attention to me?’_

The Doctor held her closer, murmuring soft nonsense until she’d quieted. She looked at the Master again. “Don’t lie to me. We shouldn’t do that. Not anymore.”

He looked at her for a long time before saying, “We shouldn’t, should we?” He sat down on the end of the bed, legs crossed under him, before leaning over to smile down on Aster. When he spoke, he sounded almost serene. “You were dying. I did what had to be done. I don’t regret it.”

She stared at him. “What did you—” The memory came to her all at once. Darkness burning through her vision, the sound of her hearts beating, simultaneously muffled and unbearably loud. Pale starlight suddenly overtaken by shining, burning gold.

“You gave me your regenerations,” she whispered, so quiet she wasn’t sure if she’d even spoken.

“Just one.” He moved up the bed, sitting beside her and curling an arm around her back, resting his head on her shoulder. 

The Doctor breathed in relief. “Well, that’s fine, that’s—” She looked at him, and his dark eyes were quiet. She shook her head, slowly at first, then she couldn’t stop. “No, no, no, no, _no!_ You couldn’t, it’s not— it’s not _fair!_ ” She was shaking. When had she started shaking?

The Master pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and Aster. “It’s okay. I knew what I was doing.” Only one life left, and he’d given it to her. What else was there to do? The Master without the Doctor, Koschei without Theta, it wouldn’t be right. They were never meant to be apart, it was only fate that had deemed otherwise.

“But _why?_ ”

He chuckled. “Because of you. Always you.” He wiped a tear from her cheek. “Don’t cry, love. It’s alright now. The universe needs you more than it could ever need me."

"I don't _care_ about the universe!"

He closed his eyes, pressing their foreheads together. “Oh, Theta. You are the universe.”

They stayed like that for a long time, only the three of them alone in the universe, the sun bright outside. It was a while before the Doctor could speak again. “How long?” She looked up sharply, hazel eyes searching. “How long in this body?”

He considered it for a moment before shrugging. “A thousand years, give or take. If I’m smart.”

She shuddered, clutching his shirt. “You better be smart, then.”

He smiled, kissing her for the second time in as many days. “Stay with me for a thousand years, and I will.”

Her fingers wrapped around his arm. She nodded into his chest. “Okay.”

Neither was sure how long they stayed curled up in bed. _Not long enough_ , they’d think later. How funny. Two Time Lords who never seemed to have enough time.

The Master suddenly stiffened in bed, turning to the window. “Do you hear that? In the courtyard?”

The Doctor frowned. “Maybe? I don’t—”

The Master got up, holding a finger to his lips. “Shhh.” He moved silently over the stone floors, looking out the tinted window. It only took him a moment to see what was out of place. A column, not unlike the others that littered the ruins of Karn. But this one — red stone, weathered, half-collapsed — had not been there before.

“We have to go.” He pulled the hangings over the window and grabbed the baby sling, giving it to the Doctor. “TARDIS.” And, unspoken: _Time Lords._

Her blood ran cold. “They know we’re here?”

“They have to.” He cursed. “ _Ohila._ _Fuck._ I’ll kill her, I swear, I’ll—” He stopped, forcing himself to breathe. “You run. I imagine they have the Tardis, but we can—”

He froze. They both did as they were incased in a time lock and Gallifreyan soldiers barged in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short ... but impactful


	15. The Stolen Son

_Memories V._

Koschei smiled into the mirror as he finished combing his son’s hair, saying, “You look like a proper little Time Lord, don’t you?”

Helio shifted awkwardly in his robes, looking miserable. “I don't want to be a Time Lord! I want to stay here and be your Time Tot, and dad's!”

Koschei repressed the urge to sigh. Helio had always been a needy child, and it had only gotten worse in the weeks leading up to their return to Gallifrey. They’d hoped Helio would be ready by the time he went to the Academy, but . . .

Koschei leaned down, smiling at his son. “You'll always be our Sunshine. Nothing could ever really take you from us. _But_ if you stay at the Academy for a month and still decide it's not for you,” he shrugged to emphasize his point, “we'll bring you straight back to the TARDIS. Okay?”

Helio nodded reluctantly. “Okay . . .”

Someone knocked at the door, and Selene came in a moment later, black-and-silver robes swirling around her. “Dad says it’s time to go.”

Helio gulped, allowing his father to take his hand and walk them outside. Theta was there, seeming as nervous as his son. He straightened when he saw them, smiling painfully. “Dark out, isn’t it?”

“But the moons are bright,” Koschei pointed out. Two moons hovering over the Citadel, one silver, one copper. The suns were long gone. “Let’s go.”

By the time they’d made it to the desert where the Untempered Schism was, everyone else was there. Borusa greeted them, stupid collar and all. “My Lord Master, Lord Doctor.” He smiled when he saw Selene. “And my favorite pupil.”

Selene bowed her head in respect. “Lord Borusa, you honor me.” She couldn’t quite suppress a smile. Koschei rolled his eyes. 

Borusa looked until he saw Helio. “And I suppose this is my new student?”

Helio had been hiding behind the Doctor, clutching his leg for dear life, but now he walked forward, hands tucked behind his back so Borusa didn’t see them shake. “Yes, sir. I am Helio of House Oakdown.” He seemed terrified that someone might ask him a question he hadn’t practiced for.

Borusa smiled kindly. “Greetings, young Helio. You’re eight now, is that correct?”

The child nodded.

“Well then, are you ready to look into the Untempered Schism and begin your transformation into a Time Lord?”

Helio looked up at Theta. “I have to?”

Theta froze, thinking over his answer. “Not if you don’t have to. Because it can be very scary. It was for _me_.” _And for the Master,_ he didn't say.

Helio is shaking when he nods. “I want to be brave. Like you.” And he started to walk to the Schism.

Theta breathed hard, crossing his fingers behind his back. It was probably going to be fine. He’d found the Schism frightening when it happened — _Terrifying, the most horrible thing he’d ever seen, all of time and space stretching before him, everything that ever was and ever wasn’t and ever could be bearing down on his mind_ — but he’d recovered well enough. Even Koschei had, after a while, though it had meant tear-filled night and exhausted days. And Selene had been _beaming_ after her initiation, absolutely _inspired—_

The scream that came was high and piercing. Seconds later, Helio was running toward them. The Master knelt down with his arms open, and Helio practically tackled him, wrapping his thin arms around his father’s neck and sobbing into his robes. 

“What happened?” Theta demanded, standing beside his husband and lifting a hand to his child’s head. “Helio, are you alright?”

The child shook his head, and Theta felt his stomach sink as he realized his mistake. _My fault, my fault . . . oh, my sun . . ._

A moment later and Borusa joined them, not seeming particularly surprised. “He looked into the vortex. You must have known this could have happened.”

Theta started to bite out a reply, but there was nothing he could say. It was their own fault. No matter what Gallifrey said, they’d known Helio wasn’t ready, maybe would never be ready. He kissed Helio’s hair, hugging him. “I’m sorry, dearest. I’m so sorry.” Theta and Helio had the same blonde curls. _Golden Sun_ , that’s what his child’s name meant. Because what was brighter or more important than the suns above them?

They stayed that way for a while, the stars and moons above them, but no suns, before finally Borusa said, “It’s time. He has to go to the Academy.”

“He does _not_ ,” the Master growled, clutching the eight-year-old harder. “He needs to be with his family right now, not you soulless—”

“Master, I understand your displeasure, but the rites and traditions of Gallifrey are paramount—”

“ _Fuck_ your traditions!” Theta shouted. “How—”

“I’ll take him, Dad,” Selene said quietly, one hand settling lightly on his elbow. “I’m going back to the Academy tonight, too. I’ll watch over him.”

Theta stared at his daughter. When had she gotten this old? She was an adolescent now, more than halfway through her own schooling. She was not the moon-eyed girl she’d been when she first left them.

He spent so long staring that Selene eschewed an answer, reaching forward to lift her brother into her arms. “Shhh,” she said quietly when Helio hiccupped, trying to force his sobs down and away. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. It can’t hurt you, don’t you see? It’s only time.”

Later, they wouldn’t know why they let him go. Why they didn’t drag Helio and Selene both back to the TARDIS, why they didn’t run. Something in the waves of time they felt made them still.

Hours later, Selene would sit up suddenly in the bed where a moment ago she’d been comforting her still-crying brother. She stared at the plain gray TARDIS that appeared in the bedroom, then smiled. 

Theta popped his head out the door, smiling. “Hello!”

Helio stilled before jumping up and running into his father’s arms. “You came back!”

“Of course we did,” Theta said, holding the door open for Selene before shutting it. “We have one last trip to make before school starts.”

There’s a planet all on its own in the universe, with no other planets or suns or moons. But it’s in the center of a star system more than a million strong, and silver light gives life to purple-black grass. 

They lay in a field of that grass, all four of them looking up at the stars. Theta and Koschei pointed out a hundred different galaxies and stars and constellations to their children. “That’s the Hero of Rigellus, the Crown of a Thousand Stars, and the Medusa Cascade. I don’t know if you can see Kasterborous from here . . .”

Koschei kissed him suddenly, fingers curled in his hair as their minds twisted and formed around each other. _I wish it were always like this. Just us four. A family, forever._

 _It will be,_ Theta promised. _One day._

By the time they went back, Helio was calm and quiet, occasionally asking a question about the things they’d seen or what the Academy would be like. Koschei tucked him into bed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Love you most.”

“Love you best,” Helio said with a grin. “Dad?”

“Yes?” Theta and Koschei said at the same time.

“Can we take trips like this all the time?”

Theta smiled. “If that’s what you want. In fact, how about after your first week of class, we go to Earth? I haven’t been since I was ninety, and I’ve always wanted to go back.”

“Okay . . .” Helio muttered, yawning before he drifted into sleep.

They never took that trip. The next week, Borusa told them Helio was dead.

* * *

“Doctor, Master. How . . . _good_ it is to have you home again.”

The Doctor blinked once, twice, three times before she took everything in. The glowing circles surrounding her: paralysis field. She could just barely see the Master standing to her side, also contained. Before them, dozens of Time Lords in their stupid robes and collars and _hats_ , she wasn’t sure why she found the hats so insulting. 

“I’m curious as to why Ohila waited so long to send for us, but it’s always better late than never, no?”

They could still move their eyes, and they did, staring at the speaker standing at the front of the Panopticon. It took a moment to put a name to the new face.

_Kenossium._

The Time Lady smiled. “Please. We must be formal, this is a trial. You will refer to me as the General.”

The Master’s growl reverberated through her head. _I’ll refer to you as a fucking c—_

“Can we adjust the fields?” the General said, turning to one of the other councilors. “They can talk, at least. It’s awkward this way.”

They didn’t see what happened, but a moment later, the two travelers could move their throats and mouths enough to speak. The Master took the opportunity to bare his teeth in an insane grin. She loved him for that.

Borrowing some of his courage — and rage — she stared the General down as she asked, “Where’s my daughter?”

“I’ve not seen Selene in some time—”

“ _ASTER!_ ” she shouted, startling even herself. “She’s _a day_ old, she has dark hair and eyes, and _YOU DID SOMETHING TO HER!_ ”

“Well, there’s no need for such an outburst.”

It was a new voice, and they heard the sound of shoes and gently rustling robes before the person stepped in front of them. The first thing either of them took note of, even before the black-and-silver colors of House Oakdown or the familiar yet different eyes, was the newborn in the man’s arms.

The Chancellor scowled his disapproval. “This isn’t even the worst thing you two have done. Although in terms of perversity, it is hard to top.”

Aster started crying, again, pleading, “ _Mummy, Daddy, help me—_ ”

“ _Shush_ ,” the Chancellor said, voice low as he leaned over his granddaughter, face twisting in disgust as she grew silent.

Beside her, hatred rolled off of the Master in dark, suffocating waves. “ _Don’t touch her!_ ”

“Hush now, Koschei, the adults are talking." He turned away from them. "General, I see no reason to waste our time any further. It is no secret that these two are the most infamous Renegades throughout all of Gallifrey’s history. There have been several books written about my son’s atrocities alone, entire _worlds_ exist only in their memories now. If this child is anything like its parents, it should be killed with them before it can cause any harm.”

At that point, the Doctor was ready to stop talking and start strategizing. _Can’t move, but that hasn’t stopped me before. If we can overwhelm the person controlling the paralysis fields, we can probably make it malfunction._

 _Or I could just hypnotize them,_ the Master pointed out.

_Well, normally I would say no, but given the circumstances—_

_Then I’ll rip their mind apart like a badly-built Ikea chair and make their brain run out of their ears._

_. . . Let’s not get bogged down in the details, okay—_

They heard the sound of a door slamming open. Members of the Time Lord council gasped, muttering amongst themselves. Neither the Doctor nor the Master could turn their heads to see. “What’s happening? Can someone fill us in?”

Distantly, she heard the sound of heels clicking on the marbled floors stop. “Mom? Dad? What are you two doing here?”

The Doctor had a single moment of relief before she fully processed what Selene had said. “What? You mean you _didn’t_ know this was happening?!”

“. . . I’m actually here for unrelated purposes— is that a baby?”

“Oh. Yeah, we were going to tell you, but then we didn’t. You know now, though. Aster, Selene, Selene, Aster. This is your sister.”

Selene walked forward enough to stare at all three of them in turn. “Wow. Good for you we don’t have time to get into this.”

“ _Lady Selene_ ,” the General said sharply, “you must provide a reason for interrupting these preceding or face arrest.”

Selene huffed. “First of all, it’s awful bold of you to arrest the person who saved Gallifrey and someone who is always two steps away from destroying it. Second of all, I have _plenty_ of reason to be here.” Her face twisted with disgust and anger, two emotions rarely seen from Selene. “Can you believe Borusa knew? That broke my hearts. He was like family. Oh, he denied it at first, but when I . . . _pressed_ , he admitted it. But you, you were a part of Rassilon’s inner circle before my father’s coup, weren’t you Kenossium? You must have known. I know you did.”

The General frowned, shifting. “What do you mean?”

Selene paced slowly through the Panopticon, looking at the statues of Gallifrey’s founders until she stood in front of Rassilon’s. “Regeneration . . . it’s a strange concept to think about, really. Hardly seen throughout the universe, usually in isolated incidents. Except here. Do you know when we first managed to synthesize regeneration energy in a lab? I’m sure you do. You were there, Kenossium. With Rassilon. It was the same year my brother turned eight.”

“That’s hardly relevant—”

“It is _entirely relevant!_ ” Selene snapped. “Because I know what they did! A Time Lord child, stolen from their family, pumped full of enough regeneration energy to power a sun, and dropped back in time to be experimented on by the original Gallifreyans! A _child_ , alone and afraid, used against his will to create the first Time Lords! By Rassilon! That's right. I _know_ about the Timeless Child! _I know what you did to my brother!_ ”

As Selene spoke, images flashed through the Doctor and the Master’s heads. A child, with the golden hair of his father and pale-blue eyes, looking up at someone with tears in his eyes before he regenerated. _A boy, a child, Helio, Helio, Helio, the sun, the golden sun, my son,_ **_our son—_ **

She heard the whirring of the sonic screwdriver as Selene disabled the paralysis fields. It took a moment to move. When she did, it was to the Chancellor, taking Aster back from his arms and comforting her as tears poured from both their eyes. 

She realized a moment too late that it had been too easy to take Aster back, that her father-in-law wasn’t moving. The Master stalked forward, and she was almost knocked to the ground by the force of his rage, by the sheer hatred and anger and _pain_ he projected through the room. Around them, the Council ran from the Panopticon, confused by their own visions of the Timeless Child and terrified to realize that the two Renegades were free. In a moment, only Selene, Aster, the Chancellor, the Doctor, and the Master remained. 

The Chancellor fell to his knees, veins pulsing as he stared up at his son. “Koschei—”

“Call me by my _name_.”

Blood rain from the Chancellor’s eyes. “Master. I’m sorry.”

The Master stared at him, eyes wide as he shook with rage. “Koschei—” the Doctor started. 

“No, you’re not,” he said, either not hearing her or not caring. In an instant, their bond was closed again, and no amount of trying would let her back into his head. “And neither am I.”

She felt the Chancellor’s pain as his mind, almost defenseless against a telepath like the Master, was ripped apart, heard his screams when blood and grey matter spilled from his nose and ears and eyes, held Aster and shielded her from what happened as he died.

When it was done, she and the Master stared at each other. Then he turned and walked out, and she didn’t have the strength to follow him. 

Later, when Aster had calmed down to just sniffling and she couldn’t feel the reverberations of the other Time Lord’s death throes, she quietly asked Selene, “Where did you get my screwdriver?”

Selene knelt beside her, perhaps seeking comfort in the only familiar thing that remained to her. “You gave it to me when you told me to come here.”

“Here? Here and _now_?”

“Yes. You were . . . specific.”

A future version of herself, then. She wondered when that would happen. “Is Helio alive? Do you know where he is?”

“Yes. I’ll go—”

“Do that. Wait for me when you do. Either I’ll come with the Master, or I won’t.” She passed Aster into her eldest daughter’s arms before standing up. 

Selene frowned, her arms naturally moving to support the baby’s head and hold her close. “Do you know where he is.”

“I know him. I know how he thinks. I’ll find him.” She _had_ to. There was nothing else to do now. If it was anywhere near as bad as she thought . . . “I’ll bring him home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ... did anyone see that coming?


	16. A Promise

It did not take long to find him. Even with his mind closed off to her, it didn't matter. She had known him long enough to forget what she was before, forget the loneliness and the fear that it would never end. She knew his mind like she knew her own. Better, even. Her own mind scared her. She loved his.

And she could usually tell what he wanted. Like, right now. Anger, devastation, and guilt drove him, ready to explode in a fiery display. It was what she felt too. They wanted the same thing — revenge. Chaos. Death. To make Rassilon and the others feel the same pain they felt.

And with no Tardis, no allies, no plan, and no weapons, there was only one place to go for that.

* * *

There were many monsters and weapons left over from the Time War, hidden deep within the vaults of Gallifrey, it would hardly be any trouble at all. He was sure there were even a few half-mad Daleks buried somewhere, perhaps some Neverweres and Weeping Angels. If he chose even a select few and gained control, then it would take only a few hours to leave the half-rebuilt planet devastated enough that he could pick off the survivors. It was what they _deserved._ No effort, it would be all too easy, and the legacy of his son's pain and torture would be gone. He could picture it, a screaming world on fire, just like he always wanted.

. . . So why did he hesitate?

There were a thousand weapons designed to wipe out a continent he could have chosen right off the bat, and some wonderfully destructive ones that would reduce even a planet of Gallifrey's size to dust and ash. But he didn't even stop.

First he thought it was because the Doctor and Aster and Selene wouldn't be safe. He could swing that. There were some impressive teleports down there. He could probably send them to Earth with no problem. It could be the last good thing he ever did, one of the only ones, in fact. He thought she'd like that, someday. No, that wasn't the problem.

He could feel it, just out of mind’s grasp, when he found something he wasn't expecting.

At first, he could only stare, awestruck at the audacity. Then he laughed, gleeful and manic, and he almost felt like his old self again.

"Well, would you look at _this!_ " He circled the cryochamber like a cat circling its prey, grinning. "Never did find out what happened to you after the Doctor kicked you out. Guess I know now."

Rassilon was asleep in the chamber, one hand withered from where his glove used to be. He wore only the plainest of blood-red robes, no gold or collar or sash, nothing to suggest the power he'd once yielded. He looked old and tired and broken down, a far cry from the mighty founder of all Time Lord life. In a way, it was pleasing to see that he hadn't gotten off scot-free after what was done to the Doctor. When she'd first found out about it, Missy hadn't hesitated to search for the old Lord President, intending to leave him in a contraption that would leave him in a constant state of regeneration, never having more than a few milliseconds to adjust to the new body before you were dying again. Seemed almost ironic, now. And plenty irritating since she'd gone through all the effort of thinking up and inventing such a machine only to never get a chance to use it. _Oh well._

Cryochambers were not terribly complicated things, and it did not take long to open and deactivate it, leaving Rassilon standing frozen in the middle of the vaults. Just as he started to awake, eyes slowly opening, the Master stabbed him in the neck with a syringe, grinning like a madman. 

"Oh, dear," he mocked. "Looks like you've gone and gotten yourself into quite a pickle." He tsked, casually holding up the syringe. "Oh, what's this?" He asked in faux-surprise, pressing a hand to one of his hearts as Rassilon only stared at him. "Why, it's a special recipe of mine. Made with concentrated toxin from bezai spines. Clever, isn't it? I've had plenty to spare recently."

Missy's plan had been to leave Rassilon constantly, painfully regenerating for about, oh, four and a half billion years. But this would do nicely, destroying all that Rassilon had ever made, every secret in the Citadel, every oppressive rule of their society, every Time Lord who'd benefited from his son's exploitation, until no one even remembered his name.

"Koschei."

 _Ah._ One person would remember. He'd almost forgotten.

He grinned, whirling around to face the Doctor. "My dear Doctor, you are just in time! Why, the trial's about to start! I, of course, am the judge and executioner, but you can be the jury if you want. Do you want to read the charges?"

"I'm not playing—"

"Alright, fine, I'll do it." He stood straighter, voice booming throughout the caverns. "Rassilon! You stand accused of— well, I won't go through it all because who has the time. So how about we stick to the crimes against my family in particular, hm?"

The Doctor didn't say anything, staring at them, waiting to see what he would do, what his plan was. He almost stopped at the sad, tired look in her eyes. How many times had they danced to this tune? When did their feet start to bleed from it? He wondered why he thought they could ever stop. They were bound to dance forever or die trying.

 _Death then._ He rounded on Rassilon, ranting, "Mistake the first, you used a White-Point Star to drive me insane when I was a child." Granted, he'd already gotten his revenge for that, shoving diamonds that burned as hot as a sun down Rassilon's throat until he regenerated twice, but it seemed worth bringing up. And besides, there was comfort in this, the theatrical element he so enjoyed, like a mask only she could see behind. 

"You imprisoned my bonded spouse, the Doctor, in a _confession dial_ , making him die over and over again for over four billion years." His voice had gotten lower, angrier, and he was not so much smiling as bearing his teeth.

"That's enough," the Doctor began, taking a step towards him. 

Immediately the Master brandished one of the weapons he'd found while searching earlier, this one simple in design but catastrophic in event. "Don't heckle, dear. We don't want to end it early."

In truth, the Death Spark wasn't quite as violent as he'd like. The deaths would be painless and instant, but most people would have just enough time, just a few seconds, to realize what was coming for them, to feel the pain and terror they deserved. And it would get _everyone_ on Gallifrey. Rassilon's legacy gone in one fell swoop. He couldn't have planned it any better.

Plus, it had a good name.

When he was sure the Doctor wasn't going to move, he returned his attention to Rassilon, his voice cold as ice when he spoke again. "And finally, you kidnapped, tortured, and experimented on the eight-year-old child Helio." He looked to the Doctor. " _Our_ child." Didn't she see? Didn't she understand that they deserved to die, that it was good and _right_ that they did? All this world had ever done was take from them. He was only doing what she’d taught him. 

He turned to her suddenly, eyes pleading. "Where are Selene and Aster?"

She was still cautious, still watching him with careful trepidation, but finally she said, "Safe."

The Master looked at the ground, thankful. "You should go too." He looked up sharply. "This isn't going to be pretty, Doctor."

“And you’ll . . . what?” She started to walk around slowly, circling him and Rassilon as the Master kept his eyes trained on her. “Stay and die? That doesn’t sound like you.”

He grinned wickedly, ignoring the tears that prickled at his eyes. “I want to see how it ends.”

“And I’m supposed to leave like nothing happened? Make it easy for you? No. It's you and me, Koschei. I promised forever. This is kind of the logical end, if you think about it."

He felt his lips curl in anger and fear. "Don't think I won't just because you're here. We were always meant to die together, Doctor. Don't you feel it in your hearts? This is how it's meant to be.” It was a lie, but also not. Neither of them really knew the difference anyway.

“I _don’t_ feel it,” she says, caught between being harsh and being kind. “You don't either.” At some point, she’d gotten close to him. Now, she reached out a hand, closing it around his free one and ignoring the trigger in the other. “Koschei, please . . . You think I don't understand? You think I don't want to make _someone_ pay for this? I do. You know I do. But not this.”

“Doctor—”

“You _changed_.” She was begging, almost desperate, but it wasn't for Gallifrey, and they both knew it. “I know you have. I saw it. I know you don’t want to go back.”

“That’s why I have to do this!” He snapped, surprising even himself with the force of it. “Don’t you _see?_ Don’t you _understand?_ They _deserve_ to die! They’re only alive because of him, because of what was _taken from him!_ Don’t you _CARE?!_ ” He was shouting in her face, backing her up against a wall until there was nowhere for her to run, but neither cared, too caught up in themselves to think of running. 

“They didn’t know! None of those people out there, none of the children who will die if you do this, they didn’t _choose it!_ ”

“ _It doesn’t matter!_ He was _hurt_ and _scared_ , and _WE DIDN’T PROTECT HIM!_ ” He thought he might be crying. He _knew_ he was screaming. Neither mattered. “ _I said I would protect him! That I would be there when he needed me, and I wasn’t! I let it happen, and I didn’t even know!_ ” He wanted to fall to the ground, to crumple at her feet and beg forgiveness, but instead he grabbed her shoulders, staring into her wide eyes. “ _Theta, I swear I didn’t know._ ” He buried his face in the crook of her neck, unable to stop himself, and felt it when she started to cry too.

“Koschei . . .”

“I failed. I promised I would always protect him, and I didn't. I deserve to die with them.”

“No you don’t,” she whispered. Her fingers traced over his arms and neck and hands, anywhere they could touch skin-to-skin, allowing her to send small sparks of shared grief and comfort and love to him. “None of the people out there deserve to die for this. Least of all you.” Many people, more than she would care to admit, would say that he _should_ die, if not for the reasons he believed. She didn’t care. He was hers, and she was his, and they’d made a promise. _Love is a promise._

“I want to end it. I’m so tired . . .”

She nodded, pulling him up so they were forehead-to-forehead, lost in each other with nothing separating them. “So am I.” She wrapped both hands around the detonator. “But not like this.”

For a moment, he only stared at her, almost uncomprehending. Then his hand loosened, and he allowed the Death Spark to slide into hers. She dropped it to the ground. 

She was about to start walking them out when he moved suddenly, whipping around like a snake. She watched dully as his hands found Rassilon’s skull. She heard his scream, both verbal and mental, but didn’t feel his death like she did the Chancellor’s. It took a moment to realize Koschei was shielding her, leaving her alone unharmed in the wake of destruction. In the aftermath, she will be ashamed to remember how that made her smile.

She couldn’t stop him. Or maybe she just wouldn’t. Helio was her son, and no one else needed to know. It would belong to just them. Because later she would clean the blood from his hands, and they’d fall apart in each other's arms and minds, and maybe they’d even put each other back together. She’d already forgiven him so much. This could be something she forgave both of them for. 


	17. And I Guess They Kind Of Live Happily Ever After

"Helio?"

The boy froze, sinking back into the alcove as though he could make himself smaller. "Tecetun— Rassilon? Is . . . are you . . ."

"No, Helio.” The door to his cryochamber opened, and two faces appeared, a man and a woman he’d never seen before. 

He shivered, hardly able to move. “Who are you?”

The woman, teary-eyed with a look of concern and fear, slowly reached a hand towards him and pulling it back when he flinched. “Sunlight? Dearest, it’s the Doc— your parents. Theta and Koschei, remember?”

Helio stared, shaking his head. “No, you’re not. You’re not— you’re not them, you’re different, they’re not _here—_ ”

“We _are_ , Helio,” the man said, leaning down so they were eye-level. “We’ve just regenerated. It’s been a long time, but we found you.”

Helio shook his head back and forth, his vision blurring. “No. You’re not, you’re _lying!_ ”

The man held out a hand to him, his fingertips brushing against the fabric of the boy’s sleeve. “Give me your hand.”

He didn’t know why he relented. For a minute, all he did was stare while the intruders watched him patiently. But without thinking about it, he untucked his hand from his arm, allowing the man’s fingers to skate over his palm. 

As soon as he felt their minds, all doubts melted away. He knew them, had since the day he left the Loom.

 _Dad._ He started to cry without realizing it, and soon he was sobbing as he felt someone pull him out of the chamber and into the piercing light of the laboratory. He cried harder when the woman he knew now was Theta pulled him into her arms, tucking his head under her chin and holding him close. _Mom._

He didn't know what to do and he didn't care. He let himself sob because he knew he could. For the first time in thousands of years, he was safe.

* * *

The Doctor let out a breath as she collapsed onto the bed, the Master beside her. "Do you think he'll be okay?" It had taken a lot of reassurance and gentle words to convince Helio to come onto the Tardis. He hadn't spoken at all, simply cried for hours before collapsing in exhaustion. The Master had tucked him into bed in a room that the Tardis had, without question, moved right beside their bedroom. Aster was fast asleep in her nursery for the first time after nursing and staring at her mobile in open delight. 

The Master drew his arm over his eyes, sighing. "I don't know."

"Don't say that! I need reassurance, not truth, just say yes!"

"Fine. Yes."

She huffed. "Well, now it feels fake." She stared up at the ceiling a moment longer before turning on her side and looking at him. "We'll have time, won't we? Time to help him. Make it better." Before he could answer, the Doctor's eyes widened as though she'd just reminded herself of something. "Oh! How could I– I mean, I know it's been a crazy day, but I didn't think I'd forget—" She dug around in her pockets, pulling out her sonic screwdriver, a banana, some open wiring she probably shouldn't be touching— "Here!" She held up her prize, grinning.

The Master stared, stunned. "How did you—"

"Nicked it while I was looking through the vaults for you." It didn't seem like much, a bronze circle larger than a pocket watch but smaller than a confession dial, with twelve words etched in Circular Gallifreyan around the edge. She pressed it into his hand. 

He was still looking at her, dark eyes wide. "You . . ."

"Well, yeah." She felt her cheeks heat up, but she pressed on. "A thousand years . . . it's not enough, is it?"

The Master turned the disk over in his hand, knowing that it held the potential of a dozen regenerations. Knowing them, it wouldn't be the twelve thousand years that it could be. And he knew. Of course, he knew that it would never really be enough. He would probably never be good, be like the Doctor, or what she wanted him to be. But when he thought of the future, of Helio and Aster and Theta, he thought he wouldn't mind trying. Plenty of time now.

He closed his eyes and wrenched the disk open.

* * *

"Who wants biscuits?"

A chorus of voices went up as the Doctor pulled out two boxes, passing them to the Master. “Right, we have custard creams and jammy dodgers. Make sure those get passed out evenly. Oh, Graham, don’t give him those, Helio only likes jammy dodgers.”

Helio murmured a thank you, sitting on the picnic blanket and carefully biting into the cookie as he read his book, sandwiched in between Graham and Selene. The Doctor’s eyes turned soft when she looked at her son. 

Helio was different now, but no less quiet than he'd been thousands of years ago. When Selene had found him, hidden in an old colony-planet of Gallifrey's on the edge of the Kasterborous system, alone and abandoned, he'd been a crying, traumatized wreck. Nothing they did, no hugs or words or telepathic comfort could calm him. When another day passed the same way, it was the Master who broke and said that suggesting binding the memories in Helio's mind and shielding them from himself. He would remember nothing of the experiments done to him, the violations or the fear, the lives he lived. He would only faintly know that something had caused him to regenerate and be lost for a long time, and now he was with his family again.

It was not a perfect solution, she knew, although Helio had agreed to it when they talked about it. But when she watched the Master and their two older children get up and start to run around in a game of don't-touch-the-angel at Helio's request, she found she didn't care as much. The Master caught her staring when he dropped his hands from his eyes, and grinned at her. She smiled back.

When Aster started to get fussy, she rocked her in her arms, laughing when the baby pulled on her hair. "Oh, Starlight." She held her up, kissing her foreheard. When Selene convinced Ryan and Yaz to join their game, the Doctor made sure that Aster was content before looking up at Graham. "Do you mind holding her for a bit?"

“What, I’m too old for a friendly game of tag?” Graham grumbled with no bite, happily taking Aster into his arms and making funny faces at her as the Doctor stood and ran after the Master, chasing him under the pink sky of Marisol.

She knew that one day, they would have to tell Helio about what was done to him. They would have to tell him about the Timeless Child and the lives he’d lived and let him decide for himself what he wanted to do with his memories, who he wanted to be. On some level, she even knew they would have to tell both him and Aster about the Time War and the Master and all the things they kept hidden from themselves.

But not today. Today, they could smile and laugh and be a family. And that was more than enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I Guess They Kind Of Live Happily Ever After ... or DID THEY, no it's fine they did
> 
> is it cheesy? probably. but I'm a sucker for a happy ending and dammit, they deserve one
> 
> Also ... you thought I was gonna leave the Master with one life???? This is Doctor Who. It’s fake Doctor Who, but it’s Doctor Who. They’re never gonna die.
> 
> So, I guess this was kind of the ending/epilogue chapter and now it's over. I'm kind of sad because I've had so much fun writing this, but it always feels good to complete a story. And I've enjoyed every comment and gone back and read them all when I was feeling down or just needed a smile. So thank you! I don't know if I'll write for this ship again, but I definitely enjoyed it
> 
> (also I can finally show you [this](https://lucifers-favorite-child.tumblr.com/post/617323141705940992))

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually my first DW fic and although I've watched almost all of New Who, I'm kind of new to writing these characters, so feedback on that in the comments is appreciated (but be gentle)


End file.
